


Have at it

by liverose



Series: Thought and feeling [5]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Bathtubs, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Light Angst, Monster of the Week, Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex, Romance, Scenting, Self-Esteem Issues, Teasing, Touch-Starved Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:28:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22984039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liverose/pseuds/liverose
Summary: Sometime all it takes is asking to get what you want. When neither member of a relationship are the greatest at communicating that can be a more difficult task than one would assume.Just some Geralt and OC fluff / smut
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Thought and feeling [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1635448
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	1. give an inch take a mile

**Author's Note:**

> part of an ongoing series but this is more just fun little moments more than anything else. My OC is an empath / ex barmaid from Lyria, most else isn't imperative to know to read the story.

Maybe it was because they weren't fresh, it had been a long time since a proper bath and Jaskier had griped at him to find a trail near a river hadn't he? Maybe that's why she was laying a bit farther away on the bed roll? Geralt thought this over to himself as the sun bid him to wake. Not in her own bed roll, that was now more for show, or an extra layer when nights grew cold. He still noticed though, that she was farther than normal, closer to the edge nested in on herself instead of against him. She was letting out little pained groans, her brow knit in her sleep. _'Still with the nightmare's Anima?'_ He pulled her closer and the sleepy protests just got louder till her eyes eventually opened in a frenzy and she half slunk half projected out of her spot. "Something bothering you?" He wasn't prying, just keeping tabs. They played fast and loose with these dreams that bothered her, he pretended they meant nothing and she pretended they didn't scare her.

"No bother. Gods it's early." She let out a yawn to spook the birds overhead.

"It's morning, a time of day I'd wish you and Jaskier were more acquainted with." He sat himself up, stretching locked muscles. It was decided. "Jaskier wake up." He didn't quite bark, but made sure the bard could not feasably pretend he hadn't heard him.

"What? Fuck it's early." Bed head had a name, and it was Jaskier, rubbing drool away from his lips.

"Anima grab a tunic from my bag?"

"What's wrong with the one you're wearing? Don't tell me you tore it already? Geralt I just got that for-"

"For you, the one in my bag. There's a stream down the way. We're bathing and I know you have no qualms about platonic nudity amidst the sexes but I do."

"You know I find it easier to bathe if you're actually in the water." Geralt wasn't sure if he was pointing out the obvious but he felt he constantly was so why stop now.

"I'm in the water." She snapped back. Either grumpy from becoming acquainted with the morning or the cold of the water she was sadly scoping up in a rag only to bring small quantities in contact with her skin.

"You're in a puddle next to the water." More of the obvious. To be fair she was standing at the point where the shore finally caved under the stream.

"I still don't exactly understand why it's acceptable that Anima sees me buff as the day I was born and she needs to be shielded from my lechery? Do you trust me so little Geralt?" Jaskier scrubbed vigorously behind his ears.

"I trust your eyes and I trust you hands Jaskier. It's your mouth I don't trust. Anima could sing of your boyish curves up and down hill sides and it'd be a day you'd lavish in. If you uttered the same, while I'm sure the words would make poets weep. I assure you the day would be far worse." But that wasn't it, wasn't all of it, he wasn't sure but there was something else he didn't trust about this alleged platonic nudity.

"Hmm fair." Jaskier took the small compliment laced in the threat and dunked his head underwater bobbing up with a gasp.

"Anima are you . . . do you know how to swim?" He wanted to make a joke about a whore's bath but figured it a bit on the nose and beneath him.

"What does that have to do with anything" She was ringing the cloth over her hair trying to wet it.

"You're afraid of the water." With both hands he splashed a wave at her causing her to shriek and retreat a few steps to dry land. "No worries. Geralt get out. I'm going to teach you how to swim Anima! You'll love it I guarantee." Jaskier seemed eager, grinning ear to ear.

"You will?" Geralt fell a small tug at his ego. "I'm the stronger swimmer why would you teach her?"

"First of all you don't know that. S-"

"I do."

"Secondly she'd fair better with someone a little less . . enhanced. You might forget to tell her to breathe I've seen you submerge for near a quarter of an hour in some of those thick bogs. I doubt Anima's little lungs will last as long."

" Six minutes and forty four seconds, that's the longest I've held my breath." Anima felt left out of this back and forth. Jaskier opened his mouth to ask why she knew that as such a dead fast fact but shook his head, deciding against it.

"It's a trap." He turned his attention to Geralt. "Well? Move."

"What am I taking up the whole stream?"

"This is a pressure free lesson. The last thing she needs is you grumbling and glaring from the side at poor form."

"What if I drown?" Anima was stepping sheepishly her toes curling up away from the water.

"You don't trust me either?" All that eagerness, all that smile drained from Jaskier's very bones.

"I trust you." She cringed as the water passed her ankles. _'Don't be so stand offish Anima'_ She could hear Thill scold her all the way from Lyria as the water was finally up to her knees."It's myself I don't trust. You know . . . not to drown."

"I won't let you, I promise." Sloshing over he took her hands in his. "I value my life too much to let you drown. Here lay back cross my hands, if you're made absolutely entirely of glass just like Geralt thinks you'll have no trouble floating." Jaskier out folded his arms at the skin of the stream.

"Ugh . . . fine." And Anima scrunched her eyes before leaning backwards across Jaskier's arms flailing once her feet had no purchase but calming slightly when one hand from under her smoothed out across her stomach. "Ah . . . Ah . . . I'm floating. Ha Geralt would you look at that?" She craned her neck up to look, her eyes wide with terror, awe and a small bit of joy.

"That you are." Geralt, a little put out and not entirely sure why by Anima's smile, pushed wet hair out of his face and began making his way to shore.

He dried out alone, his ears doing their best to ignore shrieks and gasps, as well as laughs and some god awful sea shanty. He hadn't put his tunic back on, finding some enjoyment in the sun beating down on his skin. He busied his time first by packing up camp then with decluttering his bags, organizing bushels of loose herbs and containers of tallows and potions. It seemed like hours before he heard two sets of wet footsteps approach from behind. Jaskier was quick to sit next to him wrapping a still slippery arm over his shoulder, nicking at the warmth the sun had baked in. "She is an awful swimmer." He leaned in heavily to whisper.

"Maybe she had an awful teacher." Geralt glanced over his shoulder at Anima who was ringing out the tunic stuck to her body. He noticed now, she was clean of the filth of days and he could smell it on her clearly, heat. Her eyes weren't set on him though, everywhere but, he seemed more of an after thought. "Enjoy yourself?" He could see some red in her cheeks he could dismiss being from the exercise but his gut told him otherwise. She was wanting, but not for him.

"No, not at all. I still hate water." She sat at his other side letting her head rest on his shoulder.

"Hmm." It wasn't the lack of freshness that kept her away at night, he knew that now. But what had changed? Why was she less interested? "Well you two still found a way to get our day to a late start. Can we get going?"

"I'm sorry Geralt. Sure we can." She placed hands against his cheeks squeezing them tightly, pecking a very tepid almost friendly kiss to his lips before pulling away.

 _'Is that it?'_ He noticed what was between his skin and her fingerz, hair. His beard was growing in again. _'She hadn't liked it when it was a brush, damn near a forest now.'_ He stood without voicing the question and redressed. He wanted it to be that, some quick trivial fix, not to be what he feared it to be. That the witcher had lost his mystique and she, while loving him terribly and endlessly, had lost some interest in him. There used to be months or years between them, giving time for memories to fade and experiences to be nearly new each time. Perhaps she wanted something new?

He had cleaved the head off the Endrega queen, they could head back to town in a day or so's time and Geralt could get the shave he hoped would fix Anima sleeping farther away from him. He was in quite a satisfied mood heading towards camp but his stomach started to flinch and quiver as a smell hit his nose and filled him with hunger. It was mushrooms and fools parsley and . . . rabbit, it was stew, someone was making stew. "Geralt!" Anima was stiring diligently, only pausing momentarily to look up at him.

"You're cooking." This was a development, they had been going on dried foods and other assorted rations for what seemed like weeks now.

"Nothing gets by you Witcher." Jaskier's head hung over the pot impatiently. "Anima caught the hares herself."

"Caught or found?"

"Caught. You think I'd serve you half rotted meat?" Anima had seemed quite satisfied in herself but the question pulled at the corner of her smile.

"No. I would just think hares would be too skittish to come so close to a noisy camp site."

"I had to walk a bit, but you said you were going to be most of the day so I figured what was the harm. Sit it's almost done."

"You walked, alone?" He could see she was viewing the questions as pestering but they came out all the same.

"I offered to come along but she worried I wouldn't be able to keep quiet long enough not to scare the rabbits away." Jaskier explained anticipating a glare coming his way.

"You should have waited for me." It wouldn't have mattered if Jaskier had gone along with her, it wouldn't have made Geralt feel any better. He himself hadn't had to venture too far off the path during his trek towards the nest to be bogged down with wolves and Nekkers.

"So we could eat by twilight? I staid on the road Geralt I wasn't reckless." Her smile was gone, the stirring was now rushed and frustrated.

"If you had waited you wouldn't have had to stay on the road, I would have come with you, helped you catch some-" Geralt would have gone on to say that he would have taught her how to hunt properly, catch real game. He had already thought to himself of doing so, of sharing some time on the road not cooped up around the fire, the only place he knew her to feel safe. In his mind they had quite the good time doing so.

"Not that we don't appreciate what you've done." Jaskier could see glares coming from both directions.

"Just eat." Anima poured stew into three bowls, despite her own appetite being nearly spoiled. They ate in silence for a while. Geralt knew this taste, the ingredients sure he had smelled before he saw them, but the way they came together, reminded him of something.

"So?" After nursing her ego a bit Anima asked for feedback on her first real road meal preparation.

"I mean it's a bit bland for my taste but beggars-"

 _'Kaer Morhen!'_ It finally hit, she was trying to replicate Eskel's cooking, bland for the over sensitive palette. Before he could acknowledge the gesture the damage was done. Anima stood and where another woman would grow loud and brash, she iced over entirely.

"Then starve for all I care you picky brats." She pulled her sleeve over her palm and removed the pot from the fire, placing it at a far away edge of camp. "Perhaps tomorrow Geralt can catch a stag or a bear and you can season them with Oxenfurd spices you've got hidden up your sleeve somewhere." She pulled out her bed roll from her bag and laid out next to the pot.

"Anima you shouldn't sleep by open food there are wolves-"

"I could only be so lucky Geralt!" Her voice finally rose just the slightest.

He went to stand but a hand shot to his shoulder. "Geralt take it from me. If you go over there right now she will slap you." Jaskier could almost feel the sting in his own cheek. Geralt rolled his shoulder out of the hold letting out a slight snort as he stood. What did it matter if she slapped him? Why did humans with their lives being so woefully short always ere on the side of drawing things out. This was a simple miscommunication, one that was leading to Anima sleeping even farther from him. He'd fix it now, not avoid it to skirt whatever immediate outburst she had for him. "She made a scene Geralt. She wants space . . . let her calm down." Jaskier tugged at Geralt's pant leg.

"I'm annoyed not deaf." She pulled the edges of her bedroll over her face.

"Anima I-" Geralt took a step towards her. Jaskier might know of women and their moods but he knew Anima better surely.

"Just let it be Geralt. We'll all forget it by morning." The ice was melting but it was still a cold dismissal.

"Hmm." He walked over and grabbed the pot and moved to his own corner of camp. He'd give her time if that's what was unanimously decided was needed but he wouldn't dangle her out to the wolves and he wouldn't allow food to be wasted just over some frivolous spat. He ate a second bowl, then a third nearly out of spite. By the fourth it was just the liquid and some leaves that had hugged the edges of the pot. Broth spilling and pooling at his chin as he pushed back the last of it. "What?" Geralt finally noticed Jaskier staring at him as if he had grown a second head.

"Nothing . . . I've just . . . never seen a Witcher eat his feelings." Jaskier couldn't help but let the end of the sentence crack into a chuckle. "Hey!" He had to dodge the bowl thrown at his head.

Jaskier woke sometime around midnight to the sound of water splashing nearby. Instinctually he thought it to be drowners coming to shore, equally instinctually he looked over at Geralt's bedroll expecting to see him sliding on his boots. _'Empty?'_ He glanced over at Anima who appeared to be tossing in some sort of uncomfortable sleep. With a put out groan Jaskier rolled out, and went to see what commotion Geralt had started in these late hours. _'First comfort food, now picking fights, does this wallowing know no bounds?_ ' He wiped his eyes as he made his way closer to the stream. There was no drowners around, just Geralt hunched over the stream a blade at his throat. "Whoa Whoa, Geralt it's not that serious, no need to do anything rash!" He ran to his friend's side.


	2. Caught red handed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier helps Geralt. Geralt helps Anima and Anima helps some random guy not get murderd. Who says the world is cruel and unforgiving.

"Huh?" Geralt gave an anyoned over the shoulder glance at Jaskier as the bard barreled towards him.

"You don't have to . . . You're shaving." Panic flatened on arival. "Ugh what are you using for lather?" The smell was unbecoming, secondairy to the sound of steel scraping too close to flesh.

"Jaskier what are you doing here?" He batted away the question with one of his own.

"I could ask you the same." Jaskier was keen to such parries. "Lurking in the shadows just to clean up . . . here you're missing spots." Jaskier took the dagger from his friend's palm meeting only minor protest. "Who are you trying to impress out here in the hicks?"

"Hmm." Geralt was not in the mood for company nor small talk.

"Oh I see. How romantic, an apology shave for Anima is it?"

"It's not a . . . I have nothing to apologize for." Geralt grumbled knowing the questions would just keep coming. "I'm not the one who called her food bland." He let his face move to better meet Jaskier's eyes.

"No you were the one who told her she shouldn't have bothered in the first place and would have been better off letting her big strong protector take care of everything. She was just trying to be helpful Geralt."

"Hmm." He conceded maybe he had come in a bit too hard. He just worried, he couldn't help that in a man with few companions they were quick to bring that out of him. "The food was bland on purpose." He added salt to the wound. "At least I think." Maybe she really didn't have a hand at seasoning, she never spoke to any cooking prowess.

"Why?"

"For me. Sight, smell, touch, hearing did you think Witchers skipped a sense to . . . enhance?"

"Well now you have us both feeling right shit." Jaskier squinted in the dark, craning Geralt's neck in improbable ways to try and get some moonlight to shine on him.

"She's been talking to you lately . . . has she seemed . . . bored. . . or wanting for something?"

"Hmm . . . is this about you two not having sex lately?" Jaskier had to release Geralt's neck and hold onto his scalp as he tensed up at the words. "Don't get all bothered, she hasn't said anything about it. Even when I asked."

"You asked her?" Geralt tensed further.

"It hurts, seeing a girl in need and not being able to help her. If she was anyone else I would offer my services but-"

"Jaskier." Geralt could not strain any farther without cracking a tooth.

"RELAX I simply asked if my ever present . . . presence was was what was causing the trouble. I offered today to make myself scarce after dinner. I was very tactful."

"Hmm." Geralt rolled his eyes to express his doubt in that statement. "And she didn't say anything?"

"She pulled a you. Just grumbled and sighed, pretending she didn't hear me annnd . . . All done." Jaskier grinned, pleased with his work. Geralt pulled some water in his palms and ran his face clean. He took the blade back from Jaskier and walked a few steps along the bank before slimy hands reached out to his ankles and with a sickening crunch the blade pierced the skull of a lurking drowner, there was some fizzling round the metal that caught Jaskier's attention. "Necrophage oil? really?" He wiped his palms against the earth before standing.

They walked back in the direction of camp till Geralt stopped dead in his tracks, turning his head as he tried to make sense of what was quite literally hitting his senses. "More drowners?" Jaskier glanced behind them, but to him at least the water seemed still.

"It's still after dinner isn't it?" Geralt wasn't looking at Jaskier, his face knit half way between anyonace and confusion.

"Huh?"

"Can you not . . . be so present? Just for a few minutes?"

"Not so . . . Oh . . . just a few minutes Geralt? Not all that enhanced are we?" Jaskier gave a light jeer and was met with a heavy shove. "Alright Alright. I don't enjoy walking blindly through the night though Geralt." Jaskier took a few paces away. "Don't say I never did anything for you two!" He grew louder as his outline grew farther away.

Anima froze, as anyone being caught would, and she very much knew she was caught. "You don't have to stand over in the corner all judgy." She tried her best to make sure her voice was even, her heartbeat calm, but she knew it was his nose that had found her first.

"Why were you . . . doing that." He was standing over her bed roll, watching with scrutiny as she sat up.

"Well at a certain age bodies go through changes, feel urges . . . completely natural I assure-"

"Why were you doing it . . ." He hunched to his knees, it was almost instinctual to be at eye level with Anima when prying. "Without me." He was no longer confused, and annoyed wasn't right, perhaps offended.

"I . . .sorry." She seemed genuinely scolded by his words.

"I'm not upset that you. . . " He ran a hand through his hair this wasn't a conversation he had planned on having, there were no tactics to fall back on. "Is there something wrong?"

"Wrong?" She could see the insult written in his eyes. "No Geralt you just seemed preoccupied with things I didn't want to bother you because I was needy."

"Needy?" The parroting continued as they both awkwardly treaded the topic. "Anima I promised to be good to you didn't I?"

"You did, and you are!" She wanted that look of not enough to be forgotten from Geralt's facial muscles.

"Your needs are just as important as my own."

"Is that why you shaved?" Anima smiled, Geralt was not the only one to notice things.

"Hmm." He gave a short smirk back as the conversation lost some of it's uncalled for bite. "All you have to do is ask. If you think I'd turn down hearing you call my name you're daft." The response he got to that statement was not what he expected, it was absolute bafflement as if mid sentence he had broken off into elder. "Anima?"

"I've never. . ." She bit at the tip of her tongue knowing there was no classy way to explain her confusion. "Asked before. It's always just been given. Just never really thought to."

_'Like swimming.'_ It made sense but it didn't make it any more pleasant a notion. She had never learned to swim because there simply hadn't been cause for it. Before Geralt she never had a chance to be needy, there were patrons lining up to pay an entry fee. Once Geralt had taken ownership to her ache, after whatever pressing and prolonged heroics or tragedy, they were both of equal want and need. Any asking was just for play or formalities. She had never learned to ask because there simply hadn't been a necesity. "Anima you're allowed . . ." No this wan't a moment of permission. "You should ask when you're needing . . . wanting. I don't want someone else to catch your eye when you're wanting. I'm asking for first crack to give you what you need. Don't pull away from me again." He was trying to dance against his possessive overtone, while still insisting he was more than capable of satiating her desires.

"Now?" She blurted before she chickened out.

"What?"

"Can I ask now?"

"No."

"Ask when you want, except for now. Now's a bad time." She scoffed as she collapsed back down on her bedroll.

"First off Jaskier WILL get eaten by something if I leave him to fend for himself much longer. Second-" He paused to kiss her, this was much more an apology. "This isn't the place you should ask first. In a bed, not down in the dirt." He wanted her to ask, wanted to give, but he wanted it to be better, more proper than what he could provide in the moment. It didn't stop him from kissing, deep and promising into her lips, laping and teasing at the curve of her neck.

"Is that so?" His mouth was acting counter to his words, but eventually they caught up.

"Tell me Anima." He grinned, keen eyes catching her hips rise in anticipation as he lifted her night shirt kissing at her naval. "Did you think I wouldn't notice?" This fed into primal needs they both had. "Or did you hope I'd find you like this?"

"Yes." It sent waves through Geralt knowing that he was causing the blush in her cheeks. He was more than a bringer of death, he could be wanted so openly for moments of indulging tenderness, it stroked at his core to hear her pleased admissions.

"Yes what? Tell me Anima." With a pull at the hem of her pants his kisses went lower. She drowned in it, the allowance he gave her just to be herself, gritty and unpolished. Not being what someone else wanted her to be or act, to adapt to their desires. Judment free she was coaxed into brutal and welcomed sensation honesty.

"Geralt stop teasing!" She protested just so she could hear him ask again, feel his fingernails dig in purposefully at her hips. She needed just a bit more pressure.

"Please." This taste reminded him of nothing, of no one. It was soley her sweat, her heat, bitter and sweet in equal measure.

"I wanted you Geralt. I was burning for weeks. Normally I'm just fine snuffing it but . . . gods-" her hands grabbed down pulling his face closer, just a bit more pressure.

 _'But what? Tell me Anima.'_ His mouth was preoccupied but she could hear it all the same, feel it in the encouraging twists of his tongue.

"The other day in the stream, just seeing you Geralt, you were wonderful." She felt him groan into her, he was giving it to her, that pressure she needed, so close to tipping over. She was glad he had shaved, no coarse beard hair nuzling and brushing with fever against her thighs.

 _'Platonic nudity my ass.'_ He knew it was bullshit, but that thought only held for a moment as more of the praise he yearned for hit his ears.

"So perfect to look at, you were so close and I wanted to touch. I wanted you more Geralt, I needed to have you." She was on the cusp of asking, and he didn't want that, not yet. He held at her hips, walling her down, increasing his efforts as she twisted and bucked up in bursts till her muscles laxed under slowing petting slides of lips and tongue.

Only after she released her death grip on his hair, and he was confident he had cleaned her as empty as their dinner pot did his face leave it's place. He wiped at slick cheeks and with a frustrated groan he stood, leveling his breath before staring into the dense tree line, gauging how woefuly lost Jaskier could have gotten. "Geralt you don't want me to-" Anima sat up, a relaxed but bit surprised look on her face. Even if he hadn't been wanting before, she could see, even in the dark, that he was now needing too.

"I want you to pack up that bedroll, I hate it Anima." He'd just as soon toss it into the stream if it didn't scoff in the face of resourcefulness. It would forever in his mind have the stigma of distance between them. "Keep mine warm till I get back. I won't be long."

"I can do that." She was already up, she would have given in to nearly any request in the moment. The task provided seemed hardly enough praise for his efforts.

"You won't pull away from me tonight?" There was still the worry, he truely couldn't help it.

"You are stuck with me snoring directly into your chest Geralt. Hope you got enough sleep."

"Hmm." He started on his search for the bard. _'No.'_ He hadn't been able to sleep, not like he should have over these last weeks, those few inches difference, not having her snore against his chest had kept him half awake, half afraid she'd move farther by morning.

The gate in his step as he entered the tavern would have easily implied the roof was on fire but he simply felt enough time had been wasted, he had recieved his payment, the rest of the day was to be their's. Jaskier had made it clear he was going to pursue desires of his own before earning coin round dinner time so it was simply Anima his eyes were scanning for. He found her at the bar, leaning heavily, having quite the bother gaining the attention of the bartender. She hadn't noticed him come up behind her, sliding an arm around her waist. "Enough you oafs! What is it with the lower back you can't just walk by without reaching out-" She spun around to scold the third boozer but stopped when she finally noticed. "Geralt!" Anger quenched into a pool of relief that he had finally found her.

"Popular are we?" If she had asked he would have found the earlier offending hands and broke them fingers at a time, but he was content and pleased in knowing that's not why she kept him.

"I'm just trying . . . " She waved frantically finally catching the eye of the slow moving man at the other end of the bar. "Trying to get a stout please."

"Heavy drink not becoming of a lady."

"She can have it if she wants it. She's paying you isn't she?" Geralt's hold on her weightened at the glare his presence elicited, this tavern was certainly not Witcher friendly.

"You want one?" She didn't seem to be feeling the same foreboding.

"No. That's a vile drink and you're a vile woman for drinking them." He smirked, if she was happy, he would hold her there, let her be happy.

"Not that kind of establishment Witcher you can’t just come in claiming women.” It was a man to Anima’s left that had no stake in their business who spoke up.

“From what I’ve heard it’s not me it’s your brothers in spirits that need reminding of that.” This was nothing new, just a gnat buzzing close to his ear. He didn’t even give him an acknowledging glance watching as Anima tried to gulp down at her drink, only pausing when breathing was paramount. “Slow down, there’s no rush.” Weather it was the fact that she did, pause to taste the brew rushing past her lips or the satisfied smile she shot up at him after the sip, it didn’t really matter, the gnat was livid. He reached out and grabbed Anima’s arm. “Let go.” Geralt’s hand was quick to curl around the back of the gnats neck, foreboding had passed they were boding full force.

“That’s what your kind does eh? Ride into town, put the vulnerable ones, mutants and feeble-minded outcasts under your spell? Turn them into crude boot licking additions to your harem?”

“Harem? Wow. Now whose popular?” Anima took her cup from the hand whose arm was still viced in the gnat’s hold. She looked down at the last sips longingly but placed the mug on the counter. “Hi I have a name . . . it’s Anima.” She gave the gnat the time of day at last. “And I’m here WITH the Witcher, who also has a name. That’s Geralt.” As she pointed at the fang beared wolf her voice was still keen and chipper, as if the words feeble-minded and outcast hadn’t hit her ears. “I’d like for both of you to let go. I can’t make Geralt let go, but I can make you. I don’t want to though, so I’ll ask very nicely, please let go of my arm.”

“Did he do it to you, turn you?” The hand left her arm and reached out to her face, gruby fingers and thumb tracing drunkenly around the corner of one of her eyes. Geralt pulled him out of his seat, pulled him at enough length that he was no longer touching her.

"He did not. I don't . . . that's not how that works." She rolled her eyes. It troubled Geralt that in all of this she hadn't flinched, hadn't even frowned, just let the man lash out and paw. He grabbed Anima's mug and handed it to her.

"There are other taverns. Unless you want to stay." If she liked this place enough, for some charm he didn't see, they'd stay. The gnat would not touch her again, he'd make sure of that, but they'd stay.

"Ah a pub crawl what a wonderful idea!" She finished the drink and stood from her seat.

"That should bother you." Geralt broke the growing silence as they left the bar. "The grabbing." He was weary to start a fight, she was still in a good mood, but this was a point worth pressing. Was this like swimming, like asking, had she never learned personal space because there wasn't a need?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter might get a bit heavy for a fluff piece but only in short spurts and only because I have an angst problem and refuse to address it like an adult.


	3. Again and Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When a day starts off so good, there's only one way it can go.

"It does." She nodded, kicking a stone down the road as she looked for another place that sold stout. "Doesn't it bother you when they call you butcher?"

"That's not the same. The name bothers me because I allow it to. Hands don't need permission to hurt." He saw the parallel she was trying to make but he saw it askew.

"They do from me. You forget that I have abilities most put upon women don't. if I want a hand to stop . . . it stops."

"And you wanted him to paw at you?"

"Look at it this way." She let out a heavy sigh. "If someone was to throw a punch at you. You could stop them, with enough force you could make it so they'd never form a fist right again couldn't you?"

"Hmm." He didn't answer, unsure if he was willing to give any ground on this issue.

"But you don't. I mean sometimes . . . but you rarely lose your resolve if you don't have to. It will only make them more scared of you, or more angry just more of something that's worse than the blow. If I had caused a fuss, used my ability or asked you to use your force it would have swept the place into a frenzy. They would have held it against you, or me or all mutant kind for all I know. Hardly seems worth the fuss just to drink in peace."

"Hmm." It still didn't sit well, but she wasn't pulling points from thin air and arguing when others touched her it made him worry wasn't a sound counter statement.

"Just because I don't know everything doesn't mean I don't know the way the world works in taverns. Give me that at least? Preferably in the form of words."

"This can't be a regular occurrence Anima, my resolve is not endless. Mutant kind is not my concern, you're my concern, Jaskier's my concern I've got none left to spare for mutant kind. . . for humanity I don't . . ." He could hear how hollow the words sounded and knew Anima hardly believed him. "I just was hoping today wouldn't be mucked with entitled assholes." He had hoped for things to go his way just once, but he hadn't woken up on a new plane of existence so expecting anything different was squarely on his shoulders.

"Well I for one still have high hopes for our pub crawl Geralt!" As always, from whatever pit of shit he found himself in, the way she called his name hoisted him, scrubbed him clean, renewed that often clawed at resolve. Her smile had wavered and wilted at points but she had held fast for him. Staid happy for him, perhaps kept the bar from turning because she knew how badly he wanted just one fine day. It was circular logic just round and round wanting a day just for them, but her smile was keeping them afloat. "I plan to stop right there." She gave an exaggerated point at some little hole in the wall. "Have another vial drink. And if you'd be troubled enough to accompany me twice the better." It was almost chilling how effortlessly she could go from remarking on the state of bigotry to just wistfully dreaming about ale.

"If that's what you want Anima. Just . . they are heavy drinks try not be blacked out by supper." It was an empty caution, he'd carry her through town passed out on his shoulder if that's where her will took her.

"Be daring Geralt, drink with me." She let her hip bump into his. "I won't force stout down your gullet more of a . . . " She stared at him, a long and thoughtful, bordering on uncomfortable stare. "In Lyria you drank mead, but that's only because you were being polite in taking what Thom served you. That's what they always serve you, pensive about a pickled Witcher. Vodka am I right? If given a choice? Now that's vial!" She hadn't even let him answer a victorious grin eclipsed the smile that had been clinging for dear life.

"I've already conceded Anima. You know of the world and it's wine glasses." He couldn't help but chuckle at the sad attempt she gave at kicking the door open. Wondering not too hard as to spoil, where she stored all this banter and lightness.

"I will take one stout, one vodka and not a word about it please." She marched right up to the bar as if she held the deed. She got all three requests in just that order and their pub crawl became more of a pub stake out, but that was neither here nor there.

"Is this the part where you tell me I can't ask because I'm inebriated?" Anima had enjoyed their waste of a day, more than she had any right to. It was uneventful and poorly lit but she loved it all the same.

"How drunk are you? Sober enough to say inebriated without pause so that's to your favor." Geralt was still in no state to wish denying her. As he watched her make her way back to their Inn he was full of content. An ever nagging worry of his was that the darkness, the lesser evils he hashed through day in and day out would sully the light that radiated off of her. It became clear in the slight twirl to her steps, the smile that lived in her even as she squinted horribly to read street signs, she would have none of it. His darkness would not devour her unless she allowed it, she was light very much to spite the dark, thumbing her nose at it. She needed the better parts of him to be the barrier in between but she had never once questioned he was the only one to do it. How this all came in epiphany to Geralt in this moment wasn't clear, but it didn't need to be, it was fact, and Geralt liked facts. He had plenty other worries without clutching to this one.

"As someone raised by an Inn keeper I'll have you know I don't get drunk. I get . . . " The sentence hung in limbo all the way through Anima fumbling to open their room. "Warm . . . happy . . . good. The world isn't spinning so I stopped right on schedule. It's good to be loose but not undone, that's what Jaskier said." She crashed her back down against the mattress.

"Jaskier?"

"Well I've never asked before so I figured why not get lessons from the person I've seen ask most. He's got a decent average of success." She was rambling, a mix of nerves and alcohol Geralt reasoned.

"And what wise words did the bard bestow on you?" Geralt grimaced slightly as he removed his boots hoping Jaskier hadn't complicated matters further.

"Be keen but not to keen. Complimentary but coolly crass. A bit of will they won't they is fine but trying too hard is the worst crime there is. Oh-" Her eyes lit up as the most important lesson had been so dreadfully over looked. "It took two and a half hours. He thought me a lost cause but he taught me how to wink." It was comically exaggerated and what came off as cheeky but still sensual when coming from Jaskier looked awkward and lame in all senses of the word as Anima attempted it.

"Color me seduced." He sat at the edge of the bed. "Will they won't they till morning then?" He had watched as the wink evolved into a blink till both eyes were long closed.

"I'm up I'm up. I know today had plans." She sat up in a fright.

"Anima asking is not meeting deadlines. I'm glad you went after what you wanted, got . . . warm." He'd be lying if tucked in his coils he hadn't started the day with intentions of using the bed for more than rest; But as she curled up against him, this hit, though in a different pitch, that primal urge. Again he was more than enough. often chastised for his cold stoicism, she had wanted and found pleasure in his company. Often purchased for his physical prowess, she had bought his time and attention and that hadn't left her lacking. "Perhaps now I can finally get at some of the blankets you always nick." He slowly laid out with a yawn.

"Like you need them." In lining up against him she kissed him, not friendly and shy, not hungry and smoldering, just comfortable and loving. "I don't need the brews Geralt I could get warm just off of you." She murmured into his chest.

"Go to sleep you're drunk." He kissed at the top of her head.

His face twitched, his muscles tensed. Geralt was waking to a warmth that no blanket could provide. He felt adrenalin surge through him as consciousness fully took to him. "Anima?!" His eyes shot open and she wasn't at his chest. _'Lower'_ his half asleep brain beckoned him to search out the warmth, the pleasant slick wetness. There she was, head bobbing not with fever but in a coaxing pace. "Anima?" He gripped just tightly enough at her hair, hoping to get her attention. Not outright wishing for the feeling of her mouth to stop it's efforts just some conformation this wasn't some wet dream. Her eyes lulled up to him, blinking in a pleased way as if to simply say hello. She finally, careful not to pop off without warning pulled slowly off him.

"You're a man of action Geralt I felt words weren't the right way to ask." A hand took place of her mouth, continuing to coax life into him. "This is me asking." She added as if the wakeup hadn't be forward enough. Her movements and his still sleepy mind had stolen everything but the bass from his voice.

"H . . . Have at it then." He died, right then and there. He had wanted to be soft and kind and memorable the first time she asked but his first input in this interaction was little more than a verbal shrug. "Anima I-" This wouldn't be dinner all over again, wouldn't let a miscommunication keep her from him. She could slap him if needed, they would go forward not back. Instead after a chuckle she grabbed at his shoulders, she was not annoyed or dismissed by his words, finding her way on top of him, crawling herself deep into his lap. His hand left her hair and placed both of them at her hips. It took a moment to notice how slow and still coaxing she was, this wasn't enough pressure, not for her, was this supposed to be for him? Was she still uneasy in taking what she wanted? "If you need more-" He held her tighter meeting her at his hips in an encouraging thrust. "All you have to do is ask." He had said those words before, multiple times, even back in Lyria, but he didn't mean this as a flirtatious tease, he wanted her to believe it.

"What are you a stringless Marionette Geralt? Already?"

"I'm no dummy." It was a terrible joke, even for Geralt, even for having a blood starved brain but she laughed, not mocking his second verbal fumble but a genuine, amused laugh. Maybe to prove there was merit behind his words or maybe spurred on by her smile, nails dug into her hip and pulled her down to him at an angel he knew she couldn't reach on her own, with still not enough but a bit more force.

"That!" It was almost a shriek, almost a pout, as Anima leaned, chasing the moment.

"What?" Again, effortlessly again, just to hear the sound a second time.

"More of that." Her cheeks were growing that shade of red, that bloom she had only for him. It was here and it was now and they both needed reminding as much as they enjoyed toying and teasing this was not the time for that. This was a chance, a very fragile chance trusted into Geralt's heavy and battle scared hands. She had asked just enough and he was compelled to give her absolutely everything.

He didn't want a third set of words to finally tip her against asking again, this was a different shade of the softness he had caved and admitted to craving in Kaer Morhen. This was him turning them under his weight, letting all his strength all his heavy and long muscles be forcefully soft. There was no blood, no guts no guttural death rasps and crunching bones. It was her slick heat, pulsing and hugging around him, her voice light and full of prickling life, it was smooth, painless and it was him bringing them bliss.

"Geralt!" Actually there was a bit on pain, just the slightest as her nails dug into his shoulders reminding him in a better way he wasn't on another plane of existence, this was real, she was coming undone, she had asked and he had delivered.

"Hmm." He still didn't trust his words, all his thoughts, those he could hold to as she cooked him alive, focused with a battle like determination. Again, as the bed shook under his efforts, he wanted her to ask again. The feeling of her lips he had almost forgotten crushed lovingly against his chest, his arms, his throat, any bit of skin she could get at again and again. As his groan grew less polite and rhythmic Anima's hands stopped their clawing and took up the post. Curling and stroking through his hair, fingers tracing along and behind his ears, the edge of his jaw, the nape of his neck, assuring him he didn't have to be strong, she loved him for all his softness as well. She clamped at the base of his neck once her body asked and received again.

"Geralt you can ask too you know." It was a laugh and a sigh all crumbling at once. "If you want to enn-" He had pulled her up, till they were kneeling into each other, she had to open more to him as he was even closer. His brow bent against hers, eyes locked like he was searching, hunting for something. "Geralt?"

"I . . ." His nose scrunched in a half snarl as he stared harder, deeper, whatever he was looking for it wasn't there and it seemed to throw him into a frenzy.

"Anima I want to ask you something." He broke their prolonged gaze. Frustrated and a bit taken a back by searching and coming up fruitless. His chin nestled at her shoulder and he was turned away from her, looking elsewhere. Anima hadn't noticed at first, her mind muddled as she spoke.

"Something? I have answers to a select number of requests in the moment." The way Geralt had worded it made it seem a question requiring more intellect then she had to spare was on the way. Some riddle or old world history trivia was going to pop out of nowhere. "Geralt?" She finally became aware that his eyes had sought purchase elsewhere. Forgoing all the balance it gave her she let go of his neck sliding her hands down up to his cheeks turning him to her. He looked absolutely torn. "Geralt I was just kidding. You can ask me anything. . . " When his eyes still refused to meet her she repeated with emphasis. "ANYTHING."

"Are you afraid of me?" It sounded like a growl, like one born from a wounded beast.

"Geralt I love you I-"

"I know that. That's not what I asked." He was still giving, still rocking their bodies against each other.

"I can be." She kissed him, tenderly aiming to mend him. "If that's what you want. But I don't think it is and I'm hardly ever wrong about that. I trust you, I'll be afraid if you ask-"

"Just a while longer." He didn't want her to fear him but just like swimming, just like asking, Geralt hadn't learned not to be feared, there hadn't been a need. It was always there, even in Jaskier, even in his brothers in Kaer Morhen even Vesemir had a small sliver of fear of what the white wolf's hands were capable of at his worst and at his best. Then there was Anima, there was no fear there and he felt a similar sensation as she had when she learned to float. Legs having nowhere to plant, terror, awe and a bit of joy. "I won't let you drown Geralt." She found the words, she always did.

Hands drifted further, over shoulders and down to his chest. "Is that all you wanted to ask Geralt?" He could hear it, she had done it for him in just that half a second. Emotions were her blades and she unsheathed a small dagger of fear. She rose from him, arched away, afraid of what he could do. She allowed him to pull her back, pull her down. Again, and again, trusting in what he would give.

"Anima I want to-" He let out a feral greedy growl as she pulled away again, arching long and taut like a bow.

"Have at it then." She cooed as she was pulled deeper into the fire.

 _'Hmm.'_ Maybe it wasn't the words, maybe it was just how she spun them, how she spun him, till he couldn't think of again only NOW, only of release.

They laid there quietly for a long while, remembering their own weight, their own limbs separately. "So?" Anima knew Geralt hadn't even recognized the silence for being such.

"Hmm?"

"Do we leave before or after breakfast? I normally miss it outright. Jaskier and I just pack up our shit at the last moment before we're kicked out."

"Jaskier. Where is he? He came in last night but just to change clothes." He glanced over to Jaskier's bed, jackets and trousers littered across the still made linens. "You two bleat that you prefer beds then don't even sleep in them." Geralt rolled his eyes as he finally stood. "We'll find Jaskier, then he can repay for this wasted bed with breakfast."

"Pressing as always." Anima yawned, she could have staid in bed but Geralt had indulged her in doing much of nothing the day before. Least she could do was help find Jaskier and get them moving. And with a light level of focus as she fumbled with cloth and boots the bard's heartbeat wasn't hard to find. "He's . . . nervous. Close . . . and nervous."

"You didn't have to use your abilities Anima. It's a small enough town." Geralt was fully dressed waiting a bit impatiently at the door.

"And you don't have to sniff everything like a blood hound but some skills just become habits don't they?" Anima gave a long stretch and was quick to follow Geralt who she was sure had already been on Jaskier cologne.

As they made their way to the Inn's main room there stood Jaskier, or more correctly there Jaskier was pinned, by some equally well dressed man against the wall. "Starting trouble so early bard?" Geralt shook his head, not another plane of existance that was for damn sure, nothing much changed.

"See told you . . . there she is." Jaskier smiled a bit too warmly over at the duo as if he wasn't prone to be slugged. The man who held him looked over his shoulder at Anima sizing her up for a moment before speaking.

"She's a freak. You went and wed a mutant?" Insult not withstanding the question alone almost had Anima choking on her tongue.

"Mornings Geralt. I don't think I'm warming to them."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not my favorite chapter but I think I'll add one or two more to redeem myself.


	4. animal comparisons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Opinions on Anima's marital state vary.

"Well it's destiny's choice who we fall for really." Jaskier was buying time, fleshing out a hastily made story in hopes it would be fast enough to starve off a punch. He usually put so little thought to the fact that Geralt and Anima weren't quite human and hadn't acomidated for that being an issue. "But yes that's my wife." There was a long stuttering pause. The man was still staring, gaze hung up on what they always were, her pale white, unnatural eyes, her blood red hair only seemed to frame them, if you hadn't noticed on first glance every other feature of her's brought you to them.

"What priest worth their cloth would allow the mockery of vows between a mutant. Do you have no shame?" It had done the desired trick, the man had let go of Jaskier, a new ire for his ritgoues rage as he slowly approached Anima.

"It's not mornings Anima. It's this fucking town." Geralt sneered as he placed himself between Anima and yet another gnat.

"And who is this the farm hand?" The gnat was not blind to the protective stance the Witcher was taking around Jaskier's ' _wife_.' The description made Anima audibly laugh a bit, something that made Geralt's sour disposition grow, his sneer evolve into a full snarl. Just like the gnat the day before Anima was not flustered, or afraid, or even annoyed, and again she would handle it, she would speak before Geralt would swat.

"Luck has it there's a priest in Lyria who cares more for coin than his connection to any god. And contrary to popular belief I do have shame. Trust I never intended to defile the sanctity of marriage with . . . you know all of me. I never saw the appeal, a coupling of two paraded and auctioned on by those who have no part, shackling the pressure of heirs to them. I was never keen nor equiped for such things. Then I met Jaskier here-" She had walked over to the bard, placing a heavy hand on his shoulder. "And thought, Just this once-" She gave a warning squeeze. "Lets see where this goes."

"Right." He saw this for what it was, a chance to explain what was going on. "Which brings us here . . . to this moment. All a misunderstanding." Jaskier gave an apolegtic glance over to Geralt.

"It always is."

"See he thought I was making a pass at him and he took quite the offense. First I explained that he had to be mistaken for I only have eyes for the fairer sex-"

"Right." Geralt barely tolerated Jaskier's liberal spreading of the truth when the topic amused him and this did not amuse.

"I informed him that I hadn't given a glance to any of the female patrons because there seemed to be a rampent case of over pronounced chins among them. No one liked that-"

"Can't imagine why." Anima scoffed at Jaskier's shallowness but he wasn't wrong, in some it worked, in other's it swallowed their face but chins were firm in the stock here.

"Then I explained perhaps I hadn't given the girls a decent shake because I couldn't. Because I was married. . . .to you." He made a geasture to emphasize the period at the end of his tale.

"And where does the farm hand fit into all of this?" The gnat's glare went from one set of unnatural eyes to another. "She finds a human foolish and full of enough pity to make an honest woman out of her and you animals have so little re-" And a punch was thrown, not by Geralt, not even by Anima but by Jaskier. He had simply heard enough.

"Don't speak to them like that!" The gnat turned with a balled fist to finally bestow what was due to the bard but he was frozen, evey muscle petrified. "Huh?" After his flinch subsided Jaskier waved a hand infront of the horror stricken man's agast face.

"What . . . what did you do to me?" The gnat's gasped out as he looked at Anima to release him. She had the ability to make him feel any emotion at all. Could have made him feel the pain of a thousand bee stings, the anguish of a dozen dead love ones, with good timing she could make him fatigued to the point he passed out where he stood, but fear was easier, it was already there. These people, this town feared them, feared those that were different, that were out of any mold other than their own.

"I hope you two don't get many contracts from here. They're going to dry up real quick." Anima sighed as she walked away from the fear, into the wild. _'No brekfast then.'_ She could feel it spreading, the fear, vining out from heartbeat to hanging heart beat. This is why she tried not to flex her magical influenced muscles, but what choice did she have? Let her friend defend her honor and have him reep the punishment for it? Even if he had instigated the event in the first place, he had put his foot down when it mattered.

"We wont be back." Geralt mentally checked another plucky backwater town he wasn't welcome in. He followed behind her before towns people started throwing things, he figured they still had a few minutes.

"I'm sorry?" Jaskier followed quick at their heavy agnst ridden heels.

"I'm sorry." They were having to take long strides to keep the swish of Roach's tail in their eyeline.

"So you've said Jaskier." Breath was hard to come by as they crested another hill. Anima was feeling woefuly out of shape.

"When . . ." Jaskier waited till they hit the downward slope. "When do you think he'll talk to me again?" The last time Geralt had shot them even a backwards glance was when some deer had popped out and spooked them.

"Probably when you pay off that bed you didn't sleep in." Anima hazarded a guess, Geralt could be petty and frugal like that. They hadn't noticed that said meizer had come to a hault, waiting for them to catch up.

"Are we done running?" Jaskier had better lungs than Anima and even he was a hare away from a wheeze.

"We aren't running." Geralt was quick to correct as he assessed the area and got off Roach.

"You weren't running. We were." Anima corrected right back. "They stopped following." She tried to look at the upside as a stitch in her side subsided. They had been followed, but angry heartbeats had turned to bothered, to out and out over it.

"Running and moving with purpose are not the same." This aparently a battle of semantics he was not willing to give up.

"No. If you staid you'd be trouble. If we staid we'd be **in** trouble."

"Hmm." Geralt seemed displeased with her retort, setting him back actual steps. "I'll be back. Don't duck your tails between your legs and run."

"So. . . he's mad at both of us?" Jaskier sat down in the dirt.

"I think he just really hates that town."

Geralt wanted the quiet of a simple hunt to distract him. He didn't hate the town, or the people that were afraid of him, they were just more of the same. He hated how obsolete he felt, how much self doubt came over him by those words. _'There's a priest in Lyria who would marry mutants.'_ It rolled around in his mind a bit as he sat silent waiting for some deer to pass by. She had stated she was uninterested in the practice but then why would she know of the clergyman who made exceptions? Someone had offered, was it pity like the gnat had guessed, or did Anima have someone else who loved her before him? Some kind hearted romantic like Jaskier? Had she turned them down to live a life like this? To be jeered and run out of town after town. To be with someone who asked her to fear him? The bard had stuck up for her, not him. The casual way Jaskier called Anima his wife just to skirt unrequited advances was a hollow reminder that Geralt could pretend to be soft, atempt to be caring, try to have answers for what she asked but he'd always play the farm hand. It wasn't a romance, it was an affair under the noses of the gods.

He could hear them, not the hoofsteps he was listening for, footsteps, uneven and a bit disoriented. "I said I'd be back. Noise will scare the deer." Is what he said. _'I wanted to sulk alone.'_ Is what she heard. She didn't respond just sat next to him, in a silence that was more comfortable than it had any right being. An hour or so passed that way till she finally made a sound, still no words just a bored sigh and a rythmic tapping of the back of her head into the tree behind them. "Why are you here?"

"I'm an empath, not a telepath." She whispered almost mokcingly. _'I can't talk to you and remain silent.'_ Is what she was explaining. she'd wait, bored to the bone as she was, she'd wait. After a few more minutes, he let out an annoyed grumble.

"There's nothing to talk about." He tried to give another hint that this hunt was supposed to be a solo exercise.

"You could explain what we're looking for." She squinted at the same empty clearing they'd had been unflinchingly glaring at.

"I'm looking for an animal strayed from the group, not sick or injured, just drifted. I'll follow it for a bit, till it's cornered, has nowhere else to go. You don't want to hack at it, excessive blood just makes the meat harder to clean. Just a precise slice till it loses the energy to keep on."

"Thought you knew I don't like being called an Animal Geralt. Am I going to have to let Jaskier punch you too?"

"I'm not-"

"You want me to make shitty thinly veiled animal comparrisons? Two can play this game." There was a chuckle but it was colder than he had expected from her. "You think you've cornered the market on wallowing but you're wrong. If I'm the deer then you're-"

"The wolf." It was always the wolf.

"That I've put a collar on, ground down it's teeth but still let it out in the woods with the expecation that it's meant to bite and tear and hunt."

"I'm confused did the deer put the collar on the wolf."

"Irrelevant. Point is together or apart a wounded deer and a tamed wolf will die out in the woods. Bleeding or starving, a slow death is a slow death."

"I'm still not-"

"We're not animals Geralt is the point, so we need to stop looking at each other that way. We're people, intricate, moody people with poor communication skills. So next time you jump to some wild conclusion and picture me an injured fawn, pause. Think would Anima, a person with complex thoughts and quite the wide emotional range be able to shed some light on this? And I'll do the same when I worry I've collared the wolf."

"Did you know me when he asked?" Geralt stood and began walking deeper into the woods

"Huh?"

"Someone asked you to marry them did you know me then?"

"I did. It was after the tourney but before the bruxa attatck." Her mind traveled fondly to Lyria. "If you think you kept me back from married life you must not have been listening when I was explaining the thought does nothing for me. I do like weddings don't get me wrong, I went through all the fussing and preping with Thill and Orwen's even tried on a few of those special day dresses. You would have hated them, so much fabric and knots, buttons that went nowhere."

"Hmm." She was right, he would have hated them, she looked fine in the few dresses she had worn over the years, they just seemed to hug and swallow in a way that as the years passed seemed less and less her. If he had a choice in her outfits he'd admit that watching her walk around camp in one of his tunics that might as well have been a dress in it's own right did something special for him, but this wasn't the conversation they were having.

"And the party was grand. Plenty of dancing, pies for days Geralt filled with jams and custards and-"

"Sounds like quite the night." Honestly it just sounded noisy, but she was smiling so obviously he was missing the allure.

"I love a good wedding but that's all they are to me. Not some binding of destinys or imortalization of love. Just above average nights where your partner steps on your toes at each pass and you let it go because you're having a good time." She trailed off staring down at her feet which she still wasn't sure had recovered from that night.

"I wouldn't have stepped on your toes."

"Well then next wedding I'm invited to you'll have to escort me."

"Anima we won't-" He was going to point out that they wouldn't be invited to weddings, or birthdays, Witchers were rarely called to attend many banquets and balls. Days would go more often like this, doing jobs, wearing out welcomes and leaving, not running. But he paused and thought before he spoke. "The only gatherings we'd be likely to see are the one's Jaskier smooth talks his way into."

"I'll take the off chance of you not stepping on my toes some time in the future over a guaranteed above average night with a-" A hand clasped over her mouth. Sure she was trying to be sweet and sentinemental but there were other matters at hand, a deer was finally passing through. And Anima with a bit of a eye roll nodded cutting her statement short. Geralt stalked slowly and methodically, and the white wolf killed the deer.

"If they don't come back in the next ten minutes I'm leaving Roach. They can't just ditch me roadside. I have more self respect than that!" Jaskier paced round the mare who seemed just as convinced this time around as she had the first three times he had barked at her.

"Could have fooled me." Geralt scoffed as his broad shoulders, kill folded over them, breached the trees.

"Geralt I-" Relief flooded over the bard, only to be swept up in frustration. "Anima I expect this from the Witcher but not you. Just up and left me, do you have no consideration for the feelings of others? My own wife of all-"

"Stop with that." It was too soon in Geralt's mind to joke about what they had just left in their wake.

"It's litteraly all I do from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed Jaskier." What part of empath was beyond the understanding of any living being on the planet. "You're upset and you like to talk through being upset and now . . . Geralt is back and you can talk out your feelings like men. Geralt your shoulders are all . . . blood covered, take off your armor and I'll clean it after I cook." She passively explained that she had things to do and would not hold their hands as they spoke.

"Hmm." Geralt shrugged the carcass over in an area suitable for a fire. He squared his footing for a moment, a bit of hesitancy before removing his armor, sitting hunched almost scolded next to Jaskier.

"I'm sorry alright?" Jaskier started knowing Geralt would be just as content to sit and stew for hours perhaps days longer.

"You're not at fault for every asshole in the world." Geralt didn't squarely pin their day's misfortune on Jaskier. "And I'll . . . forgive you." That's what the bard was searching for wasn't it? He placed a hand on Jaskier's head tussling his hair slightly. "On three conditions." Nothing was worth giving if you didn't exchange it for something else.

"Three?" Jaskier took this to mean Geralt was more upset than he had predicted.

"Firstly try to have standards Jaskier. For all of our sake? Even if it's just indulging, you deserve . . . not an asshole." He worried for the bard too. What if he and Anima had indulged a while longer? Not gotten to him in time? Geralt's fist clenched. What if the gnat had hurt Jaskier.

"I can make no promises. Sometimes one makes concessions in times of foul crop. . . but I'll try thinking with both heads next time." Jaskier smiled, it wasn't just anger, the Witcher was concerned for him. "Maybe two out of three?"

"In the next town we go to-"

"I'll pay you back for the bed Geralt jeeze! An honest nights work and there'll be intrest."

"Fine that's two." Geralt nodded.

"And now that I'm a proper genie. What's your third wish Geralt?"

"When we're in town you're going to do a favor for me. You're going to wan't to speak of it again . . . but you won't. Not till long after we're both good and dead."

"Two questions?" Holding up one finger he started. "Are you propositioning me?"

"Not everything is about sex you single minded-"

"Anima doesn't seem like she'd be one to share but where there's a will there's a way. Anima?!" Jaskier called over his shoulder.

"Yes?"

"Are you out of your damn-" Geralt was mortified but his mouth was not nearly as fast as the bard's.

"Your thoughts on threesomes?" They were both a bit taken a back by the casual almost hesitant glance away from the fire she was building, like the topic was not a shock but a bore.

"Are you asking my proffesional opionion on them or personal inclination? Professionaly I think they're messy both figurtively and litteraly. In theroy they seem exciting but someone's always left wet and wanting." It was as if Jaskier had asked if she thought winter would start up early this year, not an extra bat of the eye.

"And your personal inclination?"

"With who?"

"What . . . wait what do mean with who?"

"Well I'm asuming I'm one, Geralt's two, whose the third? By your open mouth I'm inclined to assume you?"

"Yes. Would it be anyone else?"

"Well I've only heard of women Geralt's bedded. If he has with men who am I to care but from experience-"

"It doesn't matter who. There is no-" Geralt wanted this conversation dead and burried under dirt and stone.

"It certainly matters who. I won't have you invite just anyone into bed with us Geralt." She was fairly certain she knew what he meant but watching this wagon roll downhill was just the light amusement they all needed after a rough start to the day.

"No one's inviting anyone anywhere." Geralt did his best to reign them in. "Please just . . . please will you two maniacs stop it?"

"Maniac's a bit harsh." Anima shrugged and turned her attention back to the fire.

"Second question." Jaskier had up two fingers at this point. "You said after we're both dead."

"If you're alive and I'm dead, I will use any ability granted to a spectre to keep you quiet. Roles reveresed, I'll exercise you into silence. I'm not sure what I'll be able to do if we're both burried. Death won't render you mute, I know that. Where there's a will there's a way."


	5. Mindful and cruel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This all had started as a quick flash back in what was intended for this chapter then it got wildly long and out of control to the point it's just it's own stand alone chapter now.

Geralt didn't ask for his favor in the next town, truthfully didn't have time. Was contracted almost as soon as he laid his swords down. His duties came before pleasure and he found no pleasure in this job. Sorceresses were tricky business, ones with giant pet snakes even more so. As he hesitantly packed the shrike potion he warned his companions to stay at camp. Doubling down on enhancements made his actions unpredictable, he had drastically lessened the doses he would allow himself since the camps he now returned to were full ones.

He had taken it too late or too soon, either way after besting the sorceress and her charmed Scarletia he now had roughly six more hours of rage inducing shrike potion boiling under his skin. "Geralt?" His name hadn't registered in time, he had already been set off by the sound of twigs under feet, he already had steel at her throat. Not in time but eventually, proven by the fact the blade didn't press, simply held her at bay.

"Stay behind." It's what he had warned them before, it was what he was warning her now.

"Yup. That's what you said." She couldn't exactly nod so she just stated. "Hmm." She seemed to be examining him, measuring him.

"Go. Now." His voice was creaking from a dark place deep in his chest.

"I guess Lambert was right." Her measurment stopped right at hip level.

"What?" The steel wall showed no sign of wavering, until it did, until it clattered down to the earth as Geralt's hands expanded then balled; Until a unshy hand appraised and tugged at the bulge against his trousers.

"You do have a thing for sorceresses don't you?" The words were both hurt and patronizing in one foul swoop, and her hand moved to an equal rythm.

"The potion, my blood it's-"

"Sheer biology that's what all wandering men would have you believe." She dismissed with a scoff, her hand dipped within his confines, pulling him out into the sticky humid air. Her words were making no sense, his words were having no effect. Action, he reasoned, he was a man of action he'd act first and figure it out as he went.

He managed to unball a fist but as he reached for her he was halted. "No." It was short and it was stern and it turned Geralt to all but stone.

"No?"

"You're out here thinking yourself stiff over some witch and you aim to act out your fantasy on me? I won't allow it." She was on her knees nearly glaring at what she was professing to be a traitorous cock.

"I wasn't." He let his neck go long as he rode a shudder, she was still moving him closer to climax.What manner of coaxed betrayal would she view that?

"Then what's going on in that head of yours? What's got you so coiled?"

"Mmm-" Words were hard to come by earlier he had nearly lost the notion of them. His tongue darted over lips to make sure they were still there. "You." Wasn't it obvious? Wasn't it her hand around him?

"How detailed. How convincing. What if I don't believe you?" Had her hand not slowed. Had he not been galloping so close to the cusp, had potion not been tainting his blood perhaps he'd have some retort but that's not what his mind was snatching for.

"What if I take those hands away from you Anima? Pull them long your back, give you no choice but to lean into me? If I'm thinking of impaling that judgement straight out of your throat? Is that what you want to hear? That my thoughts are of fucking you like a fiend, on fours in the dirt and-" He hadn't noticed as his words sped so had her hand, the rougher the image the firmer her grip, till his mouth and his dick bottomed out in tandem.

"Such a mess Witcher." Any air in his lungs died on that word, his face contorted in a wrenching pain. She hadn't stopped, first idly coating him with what he had spent then after removing her tunic placing her mouth over him.

"Anima-" His hand went to find purchase in her hair, unsure if he needed more time to breathe or more of her tongue, it didn't matter, he was denied outright. In a harsh break all warmth was pulled from him.

"Don't." She swatted his hand away before resuming a slow and methodical rythm.

"Why?" He was as confused as ever. She always welcomed his touch, twice now he had been told to keep away. Was she angry with him? This was the most backwards and dangerous way of expressing it. What a terrible sense of timing. She let the question hang for a moment, let Geralt ease into the new rythm only to pause and pull off again.

"Because, look how greedy you are right now Witcher." That word struck at his chest again, he would protest eventually once his mouth wasn't so ungodly dry. "Already demanding more. Are you that insatiable? Could I even trust your hands?" It wasn't fair. He had planned on pacing the potion out. It was her, mouth back at it, not him, milking him into this hunger. It was purposeful it had to be, bringing him close before deciding more words were necessary. "I aim to keep you." A small reprieve, an illusion of the Anima he knew nuzzled a cheek against his thigh, giving him a precious moment to fill his lungs.

"I'll please you at my pace. Show me restraint and I'll let your hands go where they want."

"Don't have much of a choice." He relented, he needed her now, yesterday, ages ago. He needed her to let him touch her and whatever sadistic request got him closer to that he'd oblige. It didn't take much longer, for as cruel as she seemed to be her cheeks were flushed, her lips swollen and heavy with the sheen of her efforts. As she pulled away again Geralt groaned, mortified of what she'd ask of him next.

"You can let go Witcher." A tight twist of the hips was the only outward evidence of how much strength it took not to release, he held back, held everything back except a sentence past clenched teeth.

"Don't call me that."

"Witcher?" She grazed her tounge along his length daring him to give in. "It's what you are isn't it? I don't mean it as an ins-"

"Not to you..." As he took a fistful of his own hair he let his focus hold at her, unsure if he hadn't been tricked, if this was one last spell cast by the witch. As she smirked up at him, coy confident and unflinching the possibilty faded. It was her, he was certain, he wouldn't have let an illusion whip him into such a frenzy, his resolve would have long since died, she was giving him just enough not to snap.

"No." She atleast sounded like herself again, soft and mending. "Not to me Geralt." The tension knotting in his shoulders burst loose, he could move again, he had to move again.

"Anima can I-" His hand dangling at his side hovered by her cheek but didn't touch, he would not take to being swatted again. Her teeth bared she bit and tugged away the glove holding it. Hoping it wasn't another sick test he cupped at her cheek, grabbing a bit roughly being over starved for the feel of her.

"Let go Geral-" His name went unended as she didn't close her mouth but opened it to him. Release came swift near at the impact and soft roll of her tongue.

"Geralt can I see your shirt?" Perhaps it was the request and reward chain that had branded it's way in him over the last hour or so that kept him from asking what for. He was back in her favor and perhaps a bit worried to lose it, shucking off armor with a bit of a grunt before handing it over to her. She had lost her pants by that time, kneeling sideways on the ground. Grass stains were easier to get out of black than gray she reasoned as she laid it out, better than nothing she supposed.

"Anima what is this? What are you doing?"

"Aparently not enough." She ran a hand through her hair, head cocked to the side as she watched in almost fascination as Geralt's length, not even dried from her earlier efforts was beginning to pulse back to attention. "Do I always leave you this dissatisfied?"

"Hmm." He could have stated the truth, that she didn't, that his blood under it's current alterations was just hotter, faster, everthing in him was quick to rise, his whole body on edge. It wasn't her and it wasn't even him but the painful slosh burning under the surface. He didn't though, just sneered off to the side. Shrike wasn't called the potion of revenge for no reason and it bid Geralt to pay her back for all her scolds and dismissive words.

"Well I said if you showed restraint I'd let your hands go where they want, and seeing as you're still wanting-"

He wanted to argue that she hadn't explained a damn thing, hadn't told him why she was here, why she had seen fit to torture him but it was hard to argue when he was finally being given permission. His hands went first to her shoulders holding her down against her makeshift bedroll, then one drifted to her throat. For a second he thought about pressing down, making sure she couldn't take it back, steal it away again but as his face held close to his hand and he breathed in a long breath, smelled her heat the thought left, he might have been after revenge but not hurt, not fear. His pace was rougher, more desperate than normal, he still wasn't thinking at his clearest.

At first it didn't bother him that he couldn't tell when his grunts ended and hers began, that his eyes were off past her head somewhere, that it was all just motions. It didn't bother until it very much did, till he heard one of her groans to take pitch in a different way, in a way he remembered. It was a moan, it was want and he finally looked at her, Anima's eyes blew wide and then fluttered delightfully adjusted. He was smelling it, hearing it, seeing it, as he felt her tighten around him he felt her want and revenge took a back seat. All purpose and placement went into seeking more of that, more of what scratched the itch he couldn't reach himself. The sizzling under his skin while a present ache was losing his attention as he honed in on her delicate twitches and trills. He chased it, pouncing and devouring only to pick up the chace again.

After a while she grew tired, her endurance no match for his, she was shaking and sweating and eventually she needed to hold him just to keep up, holding gave way to clutching and he didn't have a chance to warn her before clutching went to clawing. Her nails dug too far into his back, his skin broke and shrike did just what was stated in the alchemy books : Shrike — the potion of revenge — mutates the blood itself. Whosoever spills a drop of Shrike-laced blood will earn a measure of pain in return. "Fuck!" She brought both of her hands to her chest as the pain shot through nerves straight to the bone.

"The potion." He stopped as fear rolled through his gut. "Anima I'm sorry." He didn't know what else to do, other than to run his thumb across the inside of her palms, kiss and nip at her knuckles apologetically, his best atempt at soothing.

"And this is . . . in you?" He had warned her to stay back, asked her to fear him, all in atempt to avoid something like this. He had hurt her, unintentionally and without raising a hand but she was in pain because of him all the same. The world had already dealt them hands upon decks of people who would hurt them, intentional or otherwise, they were supposed to be different for each other. They were supposed to be better for each other, love each other, protect each other. His mind was reeling, this had all been a test of what he was supposed to be and he had failed.

"I didn't mean to Anima. I'd never mea-"

"That's not what I meant." The pain was heavy and serated but luckily not long lingering. What was lingering was the look of sheer terror on Geralt's face. "I believe you Geralt." She'd wipe it from him, kiss it out of his memory. Harder said then done, he pulled back from the kiss almost instantly, sitting himself at a distance from her, his head hung low, his breath labored and angry.

"Do you believe you?"

"I shouldn't have taken it. The potions are a crutch if I could have-"

"A tool, not a crutch don't all Witchers use potions?"

"They do." Geralt was supposed to be different from all Witchers though, he had to be, because of them, for them.

"Jaskier was surprised you took one along today, says you haven't been using them as much since . . . Well since I've come along."

"Hmm." There was no denying the facts of it. Jaskier hadn't known potions flowed even more freely when the bard didn't tag along.

"So you've been going into hunts under prepared? Not very . . . Witcher . . .y" The Hmm was not enough apparently.

"To avoid this." His head was still down, still staring angrily into the dirt as he gestured over to her hands.

"You could've cut me with one of your big hulking swords. You going to start leaving them at the wayside? Rely on your fists? They're lethal enough in their own rights you could-"

"I know!" He barked, wether she was trying to state facts or trivialize his attempts to keep them safe, either way he wanted no more of it. After giving time to watch his shoulders lose some of their battle ready tightness she spoke softly.

"You're not mindless. In fact some might argue you're too mindful."

"What?"

"He said you don't like the way they make you feel. Which if my interaction is any indication I can understand."

"Effects Witchers differently, toxic, more a burning than a . . . stabbing. Like soap in an open cut." He tried to remember what the receiving side of shrike felt like to a human body, but that memory, the essence of human biolgy was so far off.

"You told him they made you feral, mindless. I've been here with you for hours, there's nothing mindless about you."

"Anima I've been jack rabbiting at you-"

"You're potions have side effects . . . clearly. But if you were fearl, mindless that 'jackrabbiting' would have taken precedence over your desires."

"It did."

"Your body doesn't care if I call you a Witcher. Couldn't give a flying fuck, but it bothered you enough to stop yourself. You were mindful. The sooner you realize this the less cruel I'll have to be next time."

"Next time maybe you'll listen to me and stay away."

"No. I won't." She watched and waited for the glare she knew was coming. "Ah there you are! Geralt you once told me that no one had ever loved you like I do. Do you remember that?"

"You'd think a mindfull person would make sure not to inflict pain on someone they tout as so important." He had been a fool for thinking himself capable of being different.

"Love and pain aren't mutal nor exclusive Geralt. If you aren't close enough to hurt them you're not close enough to love them, life does happen."

"You're dancing." He scoffed at the way she circled what was still fact, he had hurt her, not in a passive way, outright.

"We just need to learn from the bumps in the road. I need to know more about what these potions do to you before I try to help you through the side effects. I came in cocky, that was my fault. If I had done some more homework maybe we wouldn't have hit this hitch and I could have shut you up with the two times tonight you could have hurt me but didn't."

"Two times?"

"Twice I told you not to touch me, you were primed and starving for it and I denied you and you weren't feral, you were mindful. You could have ignored me, reached out and had what your body wanted, and that . . . would have hurt."

"Talk about cocky, you had no way of knowing I wouldn't." It had been a test of being different, maybe he only failed the pop question.

"Only everything you've ever said, done or been creeping close on seven years." She smirked.

"Hmm." He was not used to being the one hunted but she had, since the first twig snap hours ago been cornering him, trapping him in a net of examples and facts.

"Am I getting through to you Geralt? I really don't wish to be cruel like that again."

"Cruel." He wanted to say he didn't think she could be rightfully cruel. He had met cruelty embodied before, truely dispicible people and Anima would never be that. But she had, even though there was a lesser evil in mind, been cruel, her words had sliced at him, briefly wounded him. Just like he had, without lifting a hand she had hurt the person who would love her like no one else. "I don't want that again." He didn't admit that he agreed with her points, or her methods but acknowledged that he understood them.

"I am sorry Geralt." She got cocky again, inching over to him, pulling his arm around her, this was the true apology, not words but actions as she curled herself into his lap, assuring him she still welcomed the feeling, the all of him.

"Tell me Anima..." He paused to pull her closer, nudging his nose through her hair, kissing at the back of her neck. "Is it cruel or mindful when I . . . I know when you're close and I pull back." It was both exactly and not at all the same. In most intimate moments Geralt would bring her right to the edge just to slow if not outright stop, only to bring her there again. The drastic difference was the implication, it wasn't dismissive or controling it was savoring, wanting the moment to strech, not choking out pleasure but dragging out more. There were never words that bred self doubt or acusations, only praises and encouragement.

"You're not a cruel mindless Witcher Geralt. Not to me, what a mindful man you are. With the stamina to make the gods blush." She could fell a pressure at her hip.

"Anima." Mindfulness stilled bodily desires in Geralt even then. "When I say to stay away, it means . . . stay away, it isn't safe to follow."

"You say to stay away often Geralt. You deserve help and protection same-"

"It's often not safe to follow." Just as it frustrated her that no one seemed to understand the workings of empaths he felt equally frustrated at their impression of Witchers.

"I can gauge what is and is not safe Geralt I'm not an idiot." She felt a humm of skeptisism from behind her. "But as someone not always willing to share the darker parts-" Another humm. He knew there were things she hid from them because she felt it would keep them safe and hypocritically it bothered him. "We both aren't fans of being left behind, both ignore each other's warnings. I propose a truce. We each get . . . Two a year, and three extra over a lifetime. For when we're sure the other just wouldn't understand the sevarity of it. So you've got five times you can tell me to stay away, no questions asked and I'll listen."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> because this story has no begining or end not sure when I'll end it, in a flurish of angst soon I'm sure.


	6. Seven minutes in white

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two monsters for the price of one.

_'Crying?'_ Jaskier was doing his best to drown out all the sounds of nature with stories. Geralt had already heard dozens of them, dozens of times over the years but despite that it had been nearly comfortable. He almost didn't hear it, but he couldn't help but notice, something hit at his ears in a higher pitch. _'A child?'_ He lead roach off the trail slightly, the direction of the sound.

"Geralt?" Normally he warned them to stay close or stay put, he had given them no such direction. Jaskier was shocked and a little concerned. Had something changed, had Geralt learned that his companions shouldn't be pushed away. ' _No. That's not the brooder I know. Won't complain while it lasts.'_ Concern turned to hope, maybe Geralt really did finally accept them.

' _It's not moving.'_ Human or monster alike, fear or pain, wailing normally elicited some attempts to move, to run, but this sound was stationary. "Anima can you see anything past these trees?" You could imitate the sounds of someone in danger but Anima's eyes could scope past anything constructed by earth or man, leaving only the pulse and purpose granted by the gods.

"Am I looking for someone in particular?" The first sweep of thier surroundings brought up nothing, just the familiar rythms of Geralt and Jaskier's hearbeats, ambient sound by this point. ' _Farther then?'_ She focused harder, felt the hum of magic in her veins, the constriction of her pupils, the word went white. _'Farther.'_ Her companions falsely believed it was the jump into another's emotional space that pained her most, leaving her pulse for another's was unnatural and thus caused an unatural pain, but that wasn't it. The worst was the white void inbeteeen, that threatened not to consume her but simply spread he so thin that she couldn't reconstruct herself. She grabbed at her wrist as the search went longer, keeping tabs on her own pulse, she existed, she was not part of the white. _'Farther.'_ When she lingered long stretches like this, without finding an island of color, was when it grew dangerous. Nothing tethering her she would start to hear voices, no just one voice, that was both far away and yet screaming in her skull.

"Anima stop we'll get closer." That wasn't the voice of the white, that was Geralt, she did have a tether, his want not to lose her, to be unleavable, was quite the anchor.

"I'm fine, quite." She gave a shooing motion in his direction. "You're distracting me with all your worrying." Tether would keep her grounded but it would also keep her from going farther and she needed to reach. It came eventually, the voice of the void, it reminded her of the sound one hears when you hold a sea shell to your ear. Your own body's sound warped into the illusion of something else. Before she went too far, before she got lost, the white finally gave way to a flicker of pure green. "Oh. Just a little thing." Anima had found another, small pattering heartbeat deep off the path in the forest. "He's so scared . . .not hurting . . . not physically at least." It was hard to sooth, to influence from such a distance, she could do it though, had done it before, she just needed more time. He was miles off, how Geralt had heard him in the first place was astounding.

"Let him go Anima." Geralt steered roach right into Anima's back, he was not subtle in his break of her concentration.

"Kids shouldn't be out this far. Outside of us there's nothing but bears and beasts." She could still feel fear from their deluted connection. It brought back memories from when she was young, memories that had kept her from traveling outside Lyria for years.

"He's being offered up, or bait." There was no other explanation for someone to be in fear but motionless, he was being held, maybe unhurt but against his will.

"Bait for what?" It didn't bother Jaskier that he was the odd man out when it came to enhansed senses. He much prefered endulging the senses than straining them, that was his skill, his magic. He just needed details to write his next masterpiece.

"Something that prefers children." Geralt shrugged as he lead them in the direction of the noise that only he could hear. "My guess is either a witch or less likely a nekurat."

"A nekurat?" It was the child's fear still nestled in her that made a creature she hadn't heard of causing the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

"Vampire." Geralt again shrugged. He noticed her changed demenor, he would have to learn to trust her tactics but he didn't have to like what it did to her. "You're fine . . . you're not alone." Geralt had memories too, lost in the woods, a disoriented fragile human child, all alone, small in a large angry world.

"Vampires? Aw Anima must feel like home." Jaskier elbowed her ribs.

"We get two vampire outbreaks and you never let us live it down." Anima scoffed as she blinked pupils back into her eyes.

"Anima?" They were closer now, Geralt could smell the boy, and on downward gust he could smell the woman standing a clip away from him, not a woman, a banshee. _'That can't be right.'_ Another non human scent hit his nose at the most recent breeze.

"Yes? You didn't lose him did you? I can-"

"If I find something I don't lose it." He nearly took offense at her statement.

"Sorry." She put up her hands in apology.

"If you're still feeling . . . flighty. You might want to stay back. You too Jaskier." He stopped, taking their random location in a mental portrait. If they staid here he could find them again. She seemed shaky, her eyes hadn't gone completely back to normal and Geralt worried that in a moment of battle, both those things could be a huge liability. He'd let them along, to a point, he still had to keep them safe.

"Not the ideal campsite." Jaskier gave a disapproving sigh at the surroundings.

"You need us." Anima grabbed at Jaskier's arm before he could hitch it behind his neck, not allowing the bard to get comfortable.

"I need no-"

"Us? What the hell am I going to do?"

"It'll do the kid good to see a familiar face."

"Familiar? He doesn't know me from a hole in the ground. This might surprise you but it's possible I may have imbelished my notirity. Sellflessly my songs would have Geralt more a house hold-"

"No but there are two not living creatures hovering around him hoping he litteraly dies of fear. Seeing two more non humans pop out of the trees might seal the deal." It was only then that it hit Geralt, the fear wasn't lingering, Anima had never let go.

"Anima what were you thinking. What if they had killed him, have you ever even-"

"I was thinking I had wished someone had held onto me. I didn't want him to be alone." The fear might've been the child's but the sadness was her's. If someone had held onto them, maybe they would have learned those things they'd never had purpose for. How to swim, how to ask, how to wink. Maybe Geralt would have learned how not to be feared, the allure of parties, perhaps Jaskiers songs wouldn't be so distracting if he'd ever learned to carry a tune himself.

"Fine." He, nor the child had the time to go back and forth on this. "Anima if they get to him, if you feel him fading-"

"We won't let that happen."

"You'll need to let him go Anima. You hear me?" There was less unshakeable force behind the question then the statement. She heard it for what it was. _'Please. I don't want to lose you, to be alone again, I refuse to.'_ He wanted to wait for her answer, for her promise but time was not relenting. "They know we're here."

Pain hit him, froze him, the banshee was crying. He clutched at one of his ears, what had been a god send was now a curse, his sensitive ears felt like they might burst. Banshees were not his favorite.

"So what's the plan again?" Jaskier watched Geralt dismount with a frustrated grunt, as they continued further.

"You'll go to the boy, release him, get him away. There's something with a bit more mass, Geralt can you keep that at bay?" She could hear the banshee but she hadn't smelled and could only barely sense the other creature in the shadows.

"Nekurat." His hunches were good. He gave an affirming grumble. "But the banshee-" The vampire and the spectre were both fast beyond human reflex, he wasn't confident he could keep them both entertained, both off and away from the bard.

"I can hold her, not forever but long enough." She asserted Geralt wasn't the only one capable of hunches and plans.

"Anima it doesn't have a heartbeat . . . It's dead. Can you even attach to something like that, what would it do to you?" He chose his words carefully as they grew closer. He didn't say she couldn't, that he wouldn't allow it. He didn't fully understand her powers and had no right to comand them, but he had all the right in the world to worry. He knew how much it hurt, how her blood stalled when she held to his heartbeat too long, and his pulse, while slow, was still moving.

"For six minutes and fourty four seconds. It might not be beating but all that's left of her is feelings. Right in my wheelhouse." They could see them now, the boy tied to a tree, the banshee swirling and skreetching around him and the Nekurat waiting for his meal to be heavily seasoned with fear.

 _'Five minutes isn't much time.'_ He rounded down, how long Anima could hold her breath, how long she figured her blood could go without beating.

"How far away do I need to be pushed to enjoy my gift in piece?" The voice that spoke sounded like it was forever plauged with a swamp toad in it's throat.

\--Minute one--

The men sprinted. Jaskier over to the child, staring down with a just his luck type of look. So many fucking knots, his hands were used to craning and pulling at awkward angels at lute string but this would take some time. "Stop squirming." Children played less to his skill set. "For fuck's sake we're trying to help you stop squirming!" Oh and how distracting the blubbering boy, kicking and horsely wailing, was to his concentration.

\--Minute two--

The Nekurt was doing his best to explain. The boy had been given to them. Both creatures lived such awful lives why couldn't they have this small pleasure? It was the Witcher and his companions who were the monsters, breaking an uneasy peace between them and the town. He remarked how unfair it was that the girl was stalking like a predator from the bushes. In a flicker he was after her, but Geralt clutched at his ankle pulling him back into their fight.

\--Minute three--

It was akin to speaking through an interprertor. She couldn't hear words from the banshee she was trying to feed peace and stillness to. She could only feel the lingering impression of the woman's feelings. _'Loss'_ but this was specific, loss of a loved one, and guilt, and longing. The love one hadn't left her, she had left them. Eyes darting over to the child, Anima made an assumption. The banshee had left her child, maybe gotten sick and died leaving them to fend for themselves. Anima felt it leach into her pooling blood. Had her own mother felt that particular loss? When she had succumbed to illness? Her father when he sold her to pay off gambling debts? She had been the best daughter she could have been. Did he feel guilt? She had helped him win games, using her natural enough empath abilities to win at cards. But natural skill's were no match for luck. And her family had supernaturaly terrible luck if they had any. He had sold her, given her up to be an experiment. He didn't long for his daughter to have a better life than him. He longed to live another day. Sore eyes craned to Geralt. What about him? His family? Did they mourn the loss of the boy whose name had been lost to time? Death to their child, birth of a witcher, alone and not having the knowledge to know that wasn't fair.

\--Minute four--

Geralt hated when people warped facts to their need. They had given the town no option but to sacrifice their children one at a time to save them as a whole. This wasn't a bartered peace, this was an ransom demand. The Nekurat called him a masochist and he wasn't quite sure why. To be fair he was distracted, counting the seconds with each step and swing. "Any time now Jaskier!"

\--Minute five--

"Fuck you Geralt!" Jaskier was cursing the Witcher as much as he was these last few stubborn knots. He was convinced the more he loosened them a good kick and flail of the child tightened them right back up. He barely heard Geralt quip that they could switch places anytime the bard wanted. "Ha! I would but I've already held my end. . . Hey!" The child was sprinting, hollering aplogies and pleas for his mother once he was finally loose. "Geralt!" Jaskier chased after the child. Thankfully wincing as he heard Geralt's force tackle into the vampire that had been on their heels.

\--Minute six--

"Masochist." Again the voice croaked a claw dug into Geralt's thigh, another sweeping across his cheek as they rolled in the dirt. "Taking the punishment for the choices of others." They had this same choice, the towns people, they could have instead of offering up one unlucky child after another chose to fight same as the Witcher, die just like the Witcher would, but they didn't. He could smell it in his blood, the punishment he took, the pain he felt, he welcomed, for what? For who? He owed those people nothing, they feared his kind just as equally. Hadn't his people offered him up as a similar sacrifice? To save children more worthy? The witcher must've found some pleasure in the hurt, some worth in the humilation. A dog begging for the kick, because at least it was attention. What a weak abominal thing.

\--Minute seven--

Everything hurt, ached, burned. Her hold was weakining, her body constricting as she curled and colapsed in on her side like a worm under the sun. "Shit!" The white was coming in around her, low whispering sea shell sounds called to her. She had done her best, pushed her limits but she did not have a death wish. When she knew it was too much she released the Banshee, hoping she had bought Geralt and Jaskier enough time. She was losing conciousness as she figured she would. The loss of leaving a loved one, just a small fraction of it crept deep into Anima's bones, whispering hauntingly at her.

He wasn't a dog, not even a wolf. He was a person, a protector, a man, with a name, all of those things had been choices, choices he made. He wasn't a masocist. The Nekurat may have been right, he was quick to welcome a kick but not because he enjoyed the hurt. If you were close enough to kick, you were close enough to grab, it was purely stragety. Once Geralt found something he didn't lose it, he made the choice as to what would happen next. In this moment he chose to lay a more perminant death on the monster. "Jaskier get going!" Now he could focus his attention on the Banshee who was howling again and . . . _'Anima.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter might be a bit bland but it's a set up to a angst / comfort chapter I hopen will make up for it.


	7. Burn or Boil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a fight it's time to tend to wounds

If the banshee was moving and screeching that meant he had burned through his minutes. He didn't see her, he couldn't hear her heartbeat but he couldn't hear anything over the screams. "Fuck." He really did hate banshees. Leaving just one hand to clutch his sword he planted the other firmly against his ear as if it would grant him any shelter from the sounds emitted from the creature circling around him. It was slowing him slightly as his vision blurred, the sound was sending spurs of sharp pain through his head. _'Fuck.'_ It was just out of reach. He ignored how his weight shifted and buckled on top of pierced flesh. It was half a march half a hobble closer till the banshee finally was confident enough to lay in a proper strike, maybe she viewed it an act of mercy. He had crouched to a knee, bracing stronger closer to the ground than he could at full mast. This time he was faster, didn't need the kick to reach out and grab, to thrash out in a painful launch of muscle and silver. Banshees while Geralt hated them, never put up much of a fight, accepting their mercy when it finally came.

He had expected it to be quiet, once the creature crumpled into dust and loot but the buzzing, the ringing, the grinding in his ears rendered any sound or silence undetectible. "Anima?" His own voice sounded far and away coming from deep in a cavern underground. If she answered he was clueless. Ignoring the set back, and learning to lean on his stronger leg he made his way to where he had last seen her.

She was right there, which was a small gift but for someone who hadn't gotten within yards of a physical fight she looked like hell. Every vein in her left side seemed engourged if not burst, spider webs of black and purple peppering across ghostly pale skin. As he turned her onto her back he could see her chest rise and fall, her cored out eyes blinking, blackened fingertips dancing nervously across the ground. She was alive at least. He reached out and thumbed across the pulse in her neck as some necessary confirmation. "Geralt I csss msss-" He still couldn't hear more than the beginnings of whatever she was trying to say. He felt it, her scream as he lifted her, chest shaking with shout as he pulled her over his shoulder. "Geralt! Ssss msssss ss msss! Geralt fsss! I lsss yss dssss bss is yss-"

"I CAN'T HEAR YOU." He stated surely louder than intended as he took both of their weight onto his good leg which made his steps more uneven.

"Csss hsss ms? Geralt ass yss assss?"

"Hmm better than you." He didn't have to hear her words to feel her concern bleed over his shoulder as he walked.

"Assss. Yss ksss wsss yss look as is tsss only oss tsss really sssssssss us fsss-"

"STILL CAN'T HEAR YOU!" The painful ringing was enough, her hissing above him was just adding annoyance to the mix.

"I cass hess it. It fucking hurts!" He heard that, felt it, her whole body tightened in his hold when he stopped infront of Roach.

"Hmm." He knew it was going to hurt but he tried to be as fluid with his motions as possible, situating her stiff limbs and all onto Roach. "Sorry." As she folded slowly and painfully against Roach's neck he could see it for what it basically was, rigor mortis, blood starved muscles pining and needling back to life. He chewed at the inside of his cheek thinking of how painful the ride would be for the both of them and how he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

"Geralt do we hass to go inss town? I don't thss I want to. To ses thss." The better part of her words were reaching him. She didn't want to grace a town that would offer their children up for sacrifice with their presence.

"Tough . . .shit." He cursed as he hoisted himself up behind her. Sometimes he couldn't give in to what she asked. Sometimes they needed to retrieve their bard, sometimes he needed stitches and sometimes he needed to show her something before he found her a place to ride this out.

The pain brought her to tears, he couldn't hear her cry and curse but as he held her to his chest, to try and cussion the bumps he could feel her back jerk and release when blood began rushing back to previously numb muscles. "This doesn't make it better." His ears returned just in time to hear her mutter under labored breaths. _'Regret doesn't make it right.'_

"It's not supposed to be better." As they reached the town, everyone was collected there, hugging the boy, thanking Jaskier, all around celebrating their good fortune. Their faces held traces of fear and guilt still in them as relief slowly trickled through the masses. "I told you I wouldn't let you get detached. You put up a good front Anima."

She really did. From the outside looking in it would seem Geralt who was quick to brush off and grow annoyed some times even angry, embodiying a less than aproachable front was the one with bigger issues when it came to humans. That was because he didn't write them off a lost cause, and disappointment garnered reaction. It was Anima who played along, smiled and coddled even the most belligerent of bigots that had little faith. Why bother rocking the boat if it's already so far out at sea. Her expectations so low, nothing had the space to get under her skin. All mutants are warned that they will grow detatched and disillusioned with the race that they used to call their own. The world seemed to beckon them to, called out to the empath and Witcher alike to cut their losses. Geralt kneeled to no destiney, no omens, he would make choices and he would make sure Anima remembered to do the same.

"Geralt!" Jaskier ran over to Roach's side. "How's this for a hero's welcome?" Jaskier was the half full to Anima's half empty.

"Hmm" He was trying to figure out how to move her and dismount with the least amount of angush to either of them.

"Just toss me Geralt. It's going to hurt any way you try and flip me." She clenched her teeth, eyes bolting shut as she prepared for the pain.

"Do not toss!" Jaskier flailed his arms in protest, knowing full well he would drop her which would lead to his or Anima's demise he wasn't sure which. "Come here you drama queen." He let his shoulder bump it's way under her arm, waiting patiently as she shifted off Roach and onto him.

"Drama queen. Next Geralt will be telling me I'm reserved." She let her neck lull back but regreted it imedietly, fictional stars popping and prancing infront of her eyes.

"If the shoe fits." He wasn't taken aback this time, by Anima's prickly iced over mood. Just as it took time for his potions to wear off, for his senses to stabilize, when Anima held an emotion too long it simply had to work it's way out of her system. It filled him with a determination, it was a different sort of toxicity but he would help her through it, as she had with him.

He was taken slightly by surprise at her scold as he attempted to get off Roach. He had all intentions of taking her back from Jaskier but she was having none of it. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Huh?"

"You can't play deaf twice in one day Geralt. You're in no shape to play nurse maid you need to . . .fuck-" Her skin was on fire, coals were being rubbed into every pore and it was only growing in intensity. "Your leg. Go get your leg looked at Geralt. Jaskier and I will find a room. I'll be the same joy to deal with when you get back. This place does have a healer right?" She got almost through the whole statment before it crumbled into a whine.

"I can take a look at you Witcher." A man broke out of the sea of faces. "You ought to bring her along as-"

"Just take a look at him. Send him back with maidenhair if you have it. No stich or salve is going to sooth this." The way she cut him off spoke volumes to Geralt. She didn't want to be near him, not now, not with whatever emotion the banshee had left her with.

"Hair? What are you going to do braid-" Jaskier started, but he was shut down too.

"It's an herb . . . Fredrick swears it helps with blood flow. Can we please go inside . . . anywhere Jaskier. Toss me in the stables for all I care just . . . I need to lie down." The volumes expanded. She had been in a situation like this before. When? Why? How many times? It must've taken place in her crash training with Fredrick. Was her head in that dark space she had gone to in Lyria? That everyone except the two people here now knew but dared not speak of? He was supposed to protect her, how was he supposed to . . . how was he going to protect her from this?

Sending him to get stitches had only been a meager delay of the inevidable. She hadn't even bought herself half an hour's time before he was searching for them. Another Inn, but while there may have been merryment and ale flowing, he hadn't noticed. All he could hear from the floor above was her, groaning and cursing at anything under the sun. Following Anima's road map he'd deal with the physical symptoms he understood first before delving into the emotional bits of it. "I need a hot bath." He approached the front desk.

"Sure anything. You did a wonderful thing for us Witcher-"

"A very hot bath."

"I . . . yes. your friends are-"

"Too hot." He emphasized before walking away.

As he entered the room he saw Anima writhing and grabbing at bed sheets and Jaskier sitting in a chair, chin in his palm, a bothered look on his face. "Said if I kept looking at her like 'that'-" He paused for the needed air quotes. "She'd claw my eyes out. They're some of my best features Geralt. I'd like not to lose them."

"And **I** would like to point out I politely asked you to leave. Clawing was not where I went first." Her voice was strained even, trying it's best to replicate ease.

"Anima you're clearly in pain I can't just leave."

"You can! If both of you would just leave me be for an . . . hour. Everything would be right back to normal I assure you." The ease had an edge to it, a desperate twist that was begging to say anything to get some space.

Geralt turned his head, pausing for a second before taking another step, was this going to be one of those times she asked them to stay away, no questions asked? Something she figured they wouldn't understand, something dangerous that she needed to protect them from? She hadn't said so, not yet, he would tred lightly, not spook her into sending them off. He walked to the edge of the bed, lacing hands under her neck and back.

"Up." He warned her, but it didn't do much the starve off the whine and squirm as he lifted her.

"Ow." It was soft but it was controlled. "Geralt just-"

"Come on." Light but swift, he would not give her the chance to send him away. His steps were fluid, no jarring turns or abrupt stops as he took her to the room with a waiting bath.

She didn't need to see it, she could feel it, in her face, in her lungs, hitting and cooling at her skin, the hair away from boiling tub of water in the middle of the room. "Fredrick normally just makes me tea and leaves me alone." Maybe if she explained how she got through this in the past they wouldn't try to poach her like an egg.

"I'm not Fredrick." Geralt could acknowledge she survived through this feeling before. That she, left to her own devices wouldn't succumb to pain and die, but he was trying to do better for her. "This is going to hurt."

"This is a bad idea Geralt. Just let me-"

"Trust me." Light, swift and confident, he wouldn't let her doubt him enough to send him away. She didn't answer, just tensed in his arms, bracing. "One. Two-" Oldest trick in the book he dunked her down clothes and all into the steaming bath.

"Ahhhh!" She thrashed and screamed, trying to claw her way out of the tub, water cresting over edges. "Stop! Geralt let me out! Fuck!"

To the poor woman who had just been following instructions, opening the door to see if maybe she had misinterpreted 'too hot' it looked like Geralt was trying to drown Anima, holding her down by the shoulders, pinning her in a makeshift cauldron. "Is everything-"

"Out." Geralt's eyes were locked on Anima, hoping to see the beginning of relief, the shock and pain of the scalding water was holding fast.

"Miss are you-" She was rendered mute, the glare shot at her, the pure anger just as hot, just as frothing as the water she had poured was coming from Anima's eyes.

"Even if I needed your help. What would you do for me?" Her thrashing was slowing as the pain seemed to transfer from her muscles to her words.

"I-" The poor girl had no answer.

"Exactly. I'll take my chances with him. Active torture is more bearable than idle compliance." She was slowing, sinking deep into the heat.

"Miss I don't understand. Do you . . . are you alright?" The poor girl got a full sentence out.

"Don't understand, what a fucking-"

"Anima." Geralt knew this rage wasn't being directed where it was meant for, knew she'd regret it when she came to her senses.

"I'm-" She took a long composing swallow. "Fine. I'll be fine." She always had a spare, hidden in a pocket somewhere, a sterile unreadable just enough smile. "Thank you."

"Are you sure?" Poor girl didn't know when to take a hint.

"You must've had to stoke quite the fire to get this water ' **so** ' hot, be a shame to waste the fruits of you efforts talking." The little bit of praise seemed to smooth over the girl's apprehension, she finally left. Anima always found the words.

"So?" Geralt was still waiting, watching to see signs the relief he was sure this 'torture' would bring.

"Boiling's better than . . . burning." She admitted as his hands finally left her shoulders. "Where are you going?" He had gotten her, she wouldn't send him away now.

"Just . . . here." He had been pulling dried fern leaves from his bag, crumbling and tossing them in the water with her.

"Hmm . . . maidenhair." It was more the familiar smell of the spiced green that soothed her. She doubted all the healing properties Fredrick had promised the plant held. He really did believe anything could be cured with a strong enough tea. She let out a groan that finally held a measure of release instead of clutching pain as she felt Geralt's hand return to her, kneading softly at a bunch of nerves at the base of her neck. "You're not going to join me? Baths seem to be the only thing you like about towns."

"Maybe later." He saw the offer as what it was, a distraction. "Anima what's going on in here?" He let a fist give a soft knock to the back of her head, before going to her shoulders, resuming the calculative kneading. Increasing his pressure, his hold, his reasurance as he felt them curl inwards. "Emotions and words aren't my strong suit Anima, you're going to have to talk."

"Do you ever think . . . of what your life would have been like? If someone had held you? You know if you weren't made into what you are?"

"Hmm." Perhaps next time he'd be more careful of what he wished for. He had wanted her to talk but these were some heavy thought deserving words. "Time to time. At first I did . . . before the grasses. I was a dumb kid." There was an anger to his scoff.

"What do you mean?"

"I held out hope far too long. . . Just ask anyone in Kaer Morhen Thought someone would come for me. Take me back, not . . . want this life for their son." The hazy image of his mother held, too long was an understatement, that hope was all that still kept the long fuzzy images in his head. "After the grasses, thinking of anything except being . . . best at what I did seemed inefficient, wasteful use of time." He had wanted her to talk but the words continued out as he kept himself busy, efficent, hands moving along her arms. "Then . . . Blaviken." It was a topic he rarely spoke of, it always came with the feeling of ice in his marrow, in other words feelings he would just as quickly chose to avoid.

"You don't have to-"

"It happened." That's as long as he would linger there and thankfuly she didn't pry. "Then time seemed to stall out. Living day to day really drags the years along. Leaves you time to think, and when you don't want to think of what is, you think about what could have been. Still had jobs, responsibilities but when I slept, dreamed, sometimes I wasn't a butcher."

"What were you?"

"Never really remembered, never really mattered, woke up a butcher all the same." She recalled how tired Geralt was when they first met. She had never considered that he was tired not because he couldn't sleep but that he just hated waking up.

"Jaskier came along and he didn't see the butcher, he saw . . . I don't know adventure I guess. I . . . that was better, I still was what I was but It brought me someone . . . someone who didn't leave me alone even when I wish he would. Being who I was, what I was, gave me the loyalty of . . ."

"The word your looking for is a friend."

"No." Jaskier wasn't a friend, he was more than that, he was something else entirely that a word hadn't fit yet. "He's my bard." It was the closest thing he could find. "I didn't wonder what if as much, had to use that time making sure he didn't die in all the manner of ways he tried to. I met you and then I didn't wonder anymore."

"With two people to constantly save there simply wasn't the time?"

"You do atract more vampires than anyone else I know." He gave a small scoff. "No. I was what I am when you met me, when you let **me** hold onto you. When you said my name, I didn't have doubts that I picked the right one, that anything about me should have been another way. If someone had held me, I wouldn't be holding you." He stopped when he heard her snicker.

"What?"

"No faith destiny would have our paths cross no matter what variables changed?" She didn't duck, fully accepted it when Geralt reached in took a handful of water and splashed it right up in her face. "Right." She laughed. "Ow." A small whine as the laugh shook her. "Fuck destiny."

"That's what this is? Thinking of what if?" He didn't buy it. She aimed to keep him, she wouldn't think wishfully for something that would have changed that would she?

"No." She wasn't selling it. "I doubt you or I would like what I'd be if I wasn't what I am."

"You'd still be . . . you without the mutations."

"You can't really believe that can you? I mean no it didn't mutate my personality but surely it influenced how-" Any memory of laughter was gone in the bitterness of her words.

"Anima You're dancing again." She wasn't upset at what she was, what either of them were but something in relation to her mutation was making his company unbearable.

"Hardly." She did finally feel her toes uncurl, the bath was doing the trick.

"I'm working at a disadvantage here. You know that right?"

"What because emotions and words aren't your bag? You're doing just fine. I'm fine. Everything's-"

"Because when I fight you can see where the beast struck me. You can see the blows and know when and what to worry over and even still, sometimes it's wrong." Geralt let go from her arms and saw her whole body curl, her arms hugging herself as if it was possible to be cold.

"Hmm. Make room for me?" He only took his eyes off her as he pulled his shirt over his head, even keeping an eye up as he bent to unlace his boots. He gave a guiding hand to her back as he squeezed his large frame behind her. "Anima . . ." He let his hold rest over hers, reminding her he wasn't leaving, she wasn't alone. "Focus. What are you feeling right now? Don't ramble just . . . feelings are your strength aren't they?" While it normally made things easier, that she always found the words, ones that gave into needs and wants, now it made things harder. Because what she wanted, what she was buying with these words was time. She wanted time to let the banshee's influence wain, so she could tuck away any emotion or pain it was leaving in her. Tucking away wasn't helping, like an untreated wound you ignore, it would only fester. It would be worse, detrimental, when it reappeared. "You don't have to find the perfect words Anima . . . don't have to dance." He rested his head in the crook of her neck, he was around her, holding her, he wasn't letting her go. She knew that right? If she didn't she wasn't thinking straight.

"One of us has to." It was more stalling, but at the same time less, his patient assurance was chipping at her walls.

"Not always . . . Not now. Anima just because I have trouble . . . expressing them doesn't mean you should hold the burden alone. Like the potions hmm? The side effects. Let me . . . help." It was slow, and a bit unsure but it was his turn, he was trying to find the words.

"Scared." She tensed, and Geralt held her tighter, squeezing just enough, not letting go. "I'm feeling-"

"I'm here." He wasn't saying she didn't need to be scared when he was around but that he wasn't leaving, it was ok to be vulnerable.

"You said that was good right? Being scared?" It was painful, he didn't see it but he knew it all the same, she was trying to smile, to hold on, for him.

"I did. Anima it's ok. I'm here." Pushing some hair away he kissed at where her neck became spine. Not cruel, she needed him to be soft, present and soft, for her. His head went back to it's resting place.

"And if I lose you?" Her voice was cracking, her strength draining.

"You won't. I'm here." He'd repeat that little phrase as long as she needed, till she believed him.

"And when you held at the banshee. That's what you felt? Loss?"

"When it went white I heard her."

"Who? The banshee?" _'Keep talking.'_ He tried to will words out of him.

"No. I . . ." She was struggling, she still didn't believe him. "Nehelania. She's coming back. For what's hers" Believe no, but she trusted him. As the witch's vison from a month or so back swirled in her head, that Anima would die, that Nehelania would rip the glass that made her a mutant from her blood and Anima would ask for it. All that swirled in her head but she still trusted him dismissal of destiny and all.

"I won't let her take you from me." These words weren't soft, they were strong, coming from a witcher preparing for battle, her witcher. "What did she say?" Further into emotions, more words, was he getting cocky? A hand held at her knee, squeezing harder. It was working, this was helping. He was helping not hurting. Was he selfish? This was what he wanted. He went back to what he knew, a grumble against her back. No this was for her, he could feel it, the hurt easing, things were going back to normal.

"It wasn't mean. Praising even. Said fate favors the travelers. That's what made us stronger, we don't settle, we wander. We wouldn't lose because the beasts were comfortable and we were moving. I mean maybe it wasn't her, wasn't getting blood to my brain exactly. Maybe it was a hallucination, freting over noth-"

"Dancing again." The other arm stopped hugging, tugging at her hair in a warning, he did this often, **they** were returning to normal.

"I like to dance." The warmth had finally penetrated her, she finally was believing him, she could be her, be coy again and he'd love her for that, wouldn't leave her. "You'll dance with me one day. Right?"

"Hmm." Things were sufficently normal again. He stood up and exited the bath, shaking some water out of his hair.

"Where are you going? It was a rib You don't have to-"

"Cashing in my favor with the bard. Come on." He held out a hand and she took it, she was better, nearly all the way normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this disjointed story keeps spiriling longer, apologies.


	8. Dance with me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geralt hates dancing, it's such an impractical practice. What does he want instead?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know dancing is out of character for Geralt but just indulge me.

"You look better." Jaskier had been laying out on his bed, too much adventure and too many children for his liking.

"I feel better." She let out a half a yawn, half a satisfied groan.

"Guess there's nothing a good bath can't fix."

"Hmm." Geralt had been telling him that for years. Jaskier just now believed him?

"Though you could have told her that clothes are frowned upon in bathes. You can't keep her covered at all times." Jaskier commented on the fact that Anima's clothes still had a slight drip to them.

"She could barely move Jaskier. What would you have me do? Tear her clothes off."

"Some people quite enjoy that you know?" The bard gave a quick shrug.

"Hmm." He didn't care for the desires of some people. He had done it before, too close to forcing her bare, he wouldn't do it again. He was getting better, at the combination of soft and firm.

"There's a time and a place." Anima could tell Geralt was letting memories get distorted, quick to scold himself.

"Jaskier can I talk to you for a moment? Alone." It was best to continue forward not lament back.

"Sure. Thought you had all but forgotten me." Jaskier hoped from his place on the bed and followed Geralt outside.

"I'm going to lock the door behind me when I go inside."

"Lock the door? If you want privacy you don't have to fear I'll interupt. I can take a hint. You don't have-" Jaskier had an offended tone to his voice.

"I haven't forgotten about you. I've been . . . distracted lately. It'll take some adjusting." It wasn't an apology, it was an acknowledgement.

"Geralt I was just teasing. You couldn't forget me if you tried."

"Hmm." He acknowledged that as well. "You'll adjust too." He insisted.

Their paths parted, months, if monster hunts had taken him far or Oxenfurt was too impressed with Jaskier's tales, months would stretch into a year. Jaskier had been first, he traveled along with Geralt at his most unavailable and yet Jaskier waltzed in, made himself comfortable to watch Geralt's story unfold. He didn't wish to lose that, for the bard to feel he had worn out his welcome, that he was being replaced. He didn't want to miss him. "I'm happy for you Geralt! the both of you. These distractions are good for you. Making you more . . . or less, yeah less thorny, you talk more, brood less."

"Hmm." Geralt chose not to acknowledge that, he didn't want to be thornless.

It was true though. Yes Anima stole Geralt's attention but everytime they returned Geralt seemed better, more whole and more accepting. Jaskier was noticing when they were a trio Geralt no longer observed from a distance, afraid if he aproached they'd run from him. perhaps the empath had pulled Geralt from his emotional cocoon and Jaskier was just now realizing why Geralt had clung to her so quickly. He wasn't jealous, he truly was happy, he didn't have to guess and stretch Geralt's story, he could share in it. "Jasker? Stop looking at me like that it's ... concerning" Geralt waved a hand infront of the bard's face.

"Huh? Right, sorry. Anima's coming into her own too. Not sure what you're-"

"Jaskier you remember the songs you play at parties? Weddings and banquets, that sort of thing?"

"I don't forget a song Geralt." Jaskier was offended again. "Why are you asking about songs you hate my songs. You especially hate **those** songs." Jaskier was dumbfounded. If he was being honest Geralt lingered longer when he played recently, but he figured that was for Anima's sake _. 'She likes them at least'_ He gave a slight smirk. But Geralt wouldn't linger through them. when it was too flighty and flirty, when people were spured into fits of twirling and thumping their feet along, Geralt always left, with or without Anima but always with a distasteful grumble.

"The favor I asked for."

"My songs? From the other side of the door? What, are you going to have a mock wedding in there? You should-"

"No. Why would I do that?" He seemed genuinely puzzled by the question.

"Well to . . . Right. So what for?"

"Just play Jaskier. And don't speak of it again." Geralt looked unhappy, determined but unhappy all the same. Shoulders a bit hunched as he walked theough the door, an equally unhappy face as he handed over the instrumet. If possible even the lock of the door seemed unhappy.

"Right." Jaskier began tuning his lute.

"Songs?" It was Anima's turn to dumbfounded, to be rendered speechless by Geralt's unhappiness. "Geralt you don't have to if you don't want to." She knew what Geralt was offering. "I don't want to be cruel again. I won't force you to do-"

"I'll never **want** to." He was dreadfully unhappy. "But I won't step on your toes." He wouldn't ask, only offer, give her a chance.

"Geralt you don't-"

"Just out with it. Before I reconsider." He wouldn't offer a third time, folding his arms across his chest.

She considered, leaning back and forth on her feet for a moment. The unhappiness was growing, was leading to worry. He looked uncomfortable, the frequent scowl others saw as anger, she saw as contemplative concern. _'What is it with him? Some things never change. Even something he hates, a rejection nags at him.'_ She sighed, she'd have to work harder, explain again, make him understand his worth did not hinge on others. She finally decided, walking closer to him, eventually coming up against him, tightly hugging at his waist, pressing her face hard against his chest.

"It's a nice gesture Geralt." Her voice barely reached him, muffled as she pressed her face harder, holding him harder.

"Hmm." A nice gesture but she didn't want to ask. He was losing his balance. He had gone too soft for too long. She didn't recognize him, didn't want what he was trying to give. He was over reacting, over thinking he knew it, but as he stood and stared down at her thinking was all he could do. He knew she aimed to keep him, that hadn't changed, but how many slips of strength till it did?

He wouldn't leave her, he could anchor on that thought. His hand came up to her back, holding her to just the point before her breath would be pinned. He had just spent all that time convincing her he wouldn't leave, that he would be there, even when she was vulnerable. This road did not go both ways, like she had said it did, she hadn't pulled away when he had told her in Kaer Morhen that he didn't alway want to have to be strong. But that was his mistake, she meant in beds and baths, not in the day to day.

It wasn't a foreign concept, so many people expected so much of him but he wasn't supposed to expect back, he shouldn't want anything, it wasn't a trait of a witcher. He let out a grumble, giving her an out, a chance to pull back because he still couldn't, it would take a minute or two for the thorns to grow back. _'Not soft . . . weak.'_ The overthinking was churning his mind.

"Geralt?" Her voice sounded as loving as always when she said his name, the way he had grown accustomed to. The over reacting did not stifle but surged, he didn't want to miss that, he feared losing it. To apease his weakness she said it again, concern bleeding through, she thought he'd crack and break. "Geralt?"

He didn't want this concern, he would fix this mistake, somehow. That's what witchers did, fixed problems and that's what he was, that was another fact weighing him down. Next time she asked for something he'd be clear minded and strong. She was asking something now. _'Fuck.'_ He hadn't heard her but opened his mouth strong yet strained, hoping she hadn't noticed another mistake so soon. "Yes?" No mistakes. Not again. He promised himself.

"You weren't listening. Stuck in that worrying mind of yours." He felt her pull her head back, she had noticed, of course she had. "No bother." She had noticed him cringe, he turned his face away, he'd have to come to his senses quicker. "I asked Geralt-" She waited for an eye to acknowledge her, she didn't want to be ignored again. "I know you hate it but will you dance with me? Just for a little while? You talk a big game but maybe you're worried you will step on my toes?"

"I said I wouldn't didn't I?" His hand pulled from her back, he stepped the appropriate distance, taking her hands in his and they danced. Danced to song after annoying song.

He did hate it, not because he didn't know how, he'd seen enough of others to recall moves he didn't he want to make. It wasn't because he couldn't be light on his feet, all one had to do was watch his sword, how fluid, how almost graceful and seamless he struck and parried. He didn't have his swords though, not a stitch of armor, he was foolishly and almost brazenly exposed, vulnerable, and he hated that. What was the alure? Jaskier's voice was fine, but it was loud and it was drowning, while at the same time lulling like a siren. It stole and smothered at Geralt's senses and he hated that. Why would anyone want that? They were turning and moving but getting nowhere in particular and he hated that. What was the point? None of this spoke to a witcher. "Geralt?" She was smiling, not beaming but just a soft asking smile.

"Hmm?" This was the alure, the want, the point, the smile put a brief reprieve to the over reacting.

"You've been quite accommodating. I've asked a lot of you lately." Was she apologizing? What fresh hell was this?

"I told you to do as much." Not soft, not again. "I don't mind." The dancing slowed, it was almost over.

"Sure." She nodded, this eased the worry just a bit, hit well just enough.

"But?" She had more to say, she always did. Perhaps she would expect something else of him. The dancing stopped, at least it wasn't a song or two more.

"Have I paid my debt Geralt?" Jaskier could be heard from the other side of the door.

"Yes." Geralt let out a relieved sigh.

"Then I'll leave you two lovebirds alone."

"Jasker." Geralt had a warning tone to his voice.

"Right. Not till we're both dead."

"You can ask too. For things, for actions or experiencs. Your happiness is important too. You have a nice smile Geralt. I'd like to see it more."

"Hmm." Was this another miscommunication? Or another test? A chance for him to make another mistake. "This pleases me. Not the dancing but-" He felt the need to emphasize.

"No." She shook her head and looked up at him a bit annoyed. "Something for you. Not for me, not for anyone else. Something just for you. Something you want."

"Hmm." Anything he wanted from her he couldn't ask. He could, and she would say yes, but they were abstract promises, she couldn't guarentee. "I don't want anything." He'd expect nothing, accept what she gave him, she had done much for him already, she loved him, and it was greedy to ask for more.

"Geralt you're going nowhere for a few days on that leg. I'll wait long as I have to. There's no way you just wander for decades on end and never had time to think of what you want. Just chewing up and spitting out contracts. You're not just a sword with legs you're more than that. I don't get why that's so hard-"

"Maybe that's just how I dance." He needed her to stop, needed her to stop convincing him of what he knew to be false.

"Huh?"

"I was the one moving us but you were leading the direction."

"Direction?" He wasn't being literal, Geralt always led down roads, chose what places to stop, even what Inns they staid in for the most part.

"When you don't want to deal with something, you talk, find some other topic to distract yourself with." He could tell she wasn't understanding. "When the world's too much, when nothing makes sense. It's easier to be led. Not by the hand I'm no child, no puppet. But being given direction, It's easier on me." It had been that way for so long, the witchers, the contracts even Anima. He found it easier not to decide, to stay neutral and focused, the what and why was rarely important, it was keeping him moving.

"I can get that." She nodded thoughtfully, she could even relate, but this was about Geralt. "Right now you're trying to dance my way and I won't fall for it. I'll continue to wait Geralt. Something you want."

"Hmm." Why was she not giving up, gods would she just let it go? _'Fine.'_ She was leading him and he'd follow, but she wasn't the only one who wouldn't be fooled again.

"I asked you to be afraid of me." He started methodically.

"You did." Her response seemed questioning, cautious.

"And if I asked you not to. I've thought on it and it wasn't what I wanted in the first place. Don't be afraid of me?" He was testing the water, testing her.

"Then I won't but Geralt that's not exactly what-"

"Prove it?"

"You don't believe me?"

"I need to know I can . . . get what I want and not for it to be a mistake. Being soft has been taxing Anima." He peeled off his shirt. Still believing wants were for bedrolls and baths. "I'll be . . . strong again and I don't want you to be afraid of that."

"If that's what you want." It wasn't what she had meant but it was a step in the right direction, and she'd walk slow and patient. He had told her to ask when needy. She'd show him how to ask when wanting.

She had followed suit, bare to him but she was hesitant, he seemed loose in the head, elsewhere in his mind. His body wasn't up for this either, as he pulled down at his trousers groaning in slight pain as he did so she saw the stitches. not nearly healed skin sewn together over what she was sure was unhealed muscle. He should be laying out, relaxing, not trying to prove his grit to her. "Geralt you . . ." Turning him away would send him deeper into the doubt that she could sense whirling in him. And she didn't want to turn him away, she never did. ' _What is this? What caused this? Out of nowhere.'_ Her head cocked to the side, just staring into distant eyes. "Are you alright?"

"Are you afraid?" The words might have been accusatory but she heard them for what they meant. _'You can tell me no. I want simply but I'll conceed just as simply.'_ This was a test. Of both of them. Was Anima a liar or did she really want his wants? Was Geralt able to get back his balance.

"No." She was patient, and still, worried any movement could be be deemed a protest or dismissal. He was staring long and hard, for minutes on end. He watched as her eyes broke away from him, waiting, watching a bit of blush to rise in her cheeks under his gaze, he waited longer. "Geralt?" His name seemed to break his trance for a moment.

"Hmm?" It came from deeper in his throat than usual.

"What are you looking for? Do you think something's going to change? That I'll transform into something else?" There was a bit of a scoff towards the end.

"Yes." It was in that word it was clear what he was looking for, stoicly waiting at a distance for. She wasn't a deer but he was on a hunt. Her want, he still was after it, unable to want first, or induce it with his hands, he would just stand and stare and wait.

Eventually she caved and he noticed. just his presence, just his stilted hungry gaze pulled such a small but telling turn in of her knees a light appeasement of an equally light need for pressure. "Why do you want to hide?" A bit curious mostly allowing another dip into his own want. "You can't hide from me you know that right?"


	9. What do you want from me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When naked it's hard to hide anything at all especially your wants.

"I-"

"Do you want to hide?" He was walking closer to her, dizzying her as his eyes held fast.

"Sometimes. I'm not always so-" Her voice was all but swallowed up in a chest broadening breath of Geralt's as he got closer all the same.

"Now?" He was on her, finally reaching out a hand on her side, his thumb tracing the top if her hip bone. He felt her lean in, and his stoicism cracked, there was a smirk in his face. "Anima?" His hand stopped, dark as his eyes may have been he was waiting, maybe searching for her to lead.

"I want you Geralt." The smirk twitched up slightly, and his hand moved down giving a coaxing run along her. "I'll always want you." She was leaning again, into his touch, into her want.

"You couldn't run you know? Even if you wanted to." It sounded possessive, smoldering as his breath at her ear, sounded like a threat. It wasn't though, she saw right through it. If she tried to run while he'd protest he'd let her, she knew that. It'd be him that'd be in a panic, in a scramble to get away, from himself. Eventually he would go after her, he would find her because once he finds something he doesn't lose it. He'd apologize and nothing more, he'd expect nothing more.

"Whose running Geralt?" Her voice was shaky but there was confidence there.

"Hmm." Again a flicker of light in the dark, but it receded into confusion, imbalance.

"I'm not afraid of you Geralt. Isn't that what you wanted?"

"Hmm." What he wanted was to listen, as her knees closed in harder against his slow moving hand. The first time she had him he had hushed her, she had misunderstood why. He didn't want that to happen again, he wouldn't ever hush her again. Waiting paid off, he heard it, a small frustrated sigh. Her chin rose slightly and his nose nudged at her neck, prompting it to go longer, pulling out the small moan that he knew to be hiding there. "Still?" It wasn't judgemental, almost sad.

"Geralt teasing like that isn't . . ." She let it out this time, trusting that he wouldn't be cruel. "Fair."

"Anima." She wasn't holding back her moans, but her words, she seemed scared to let them go, not of Geralt, of herself.

"I'll be-"

"Good to me. Yes I know Geralt." He said that from time to time, but it wasn't enough, he could hear the impatience in her, a bit of doubt was hiding, still hiding.

"I will." But as he pulled back his hand Anima felt anything but good, she felt throbbing and unsatisfied. "It'll be ok I'm here." He was still whispering, assuring, waiting.

"Geralt?" It was wanting, soft and trusting. She wanted his touch, she needed it but he wouldn't push her. "Geralt?!" She felt her legs come up from under her, light as he lifted her, prompting as his waist wedged his way between them. His hands were strong and unwaveringly gripping into the underside of her thighs.

"I'll have you Anima." Another threat that wasn't exactly that. He wasn't letting go as he walked them towards the bed, wouldn't leave her.

"Geralt your leg." She could feel the minimal limp in his gate.

"It's healing." He tossed her on the bed, it had been low to the sheets, thoughtful, concerned. "I heal fast." He was reminding her, in case she forgot, what he was.

"You'd heal faster if-" She didn't get the rest of the sentence out. He was over her, looming, a hand next to each shoulder. He was still staring, but he didn't linger, didn't get lost there. He was inside her with a deep groan. He was slow at first, pinning her hands above her head. The first time he did that so agressively, he had regretted it, she hadn't spoken of his frenzied hunger again, perhaps she regretted it too, he'd never know. He didn't want that doubt again wouldn't tear at clothes he now decided he would replace. He didn't want to lose his bearings again, he didn't want to lose her trust, his pace quickened as he went deeper still. He didn't want so much, he'd not want anything if she continued to keep him.

"Geralt." Her body was tightening up, leaning towards him, taking more. Was that the only word she had? He didn't care, it was all the affirmation he needed, she aimed to keep him. his name never lied, never hid her love, she hid so much but not that, she bared that unafraid that he'd ruin it. She hadn't lied, she wasn't afraid of him. His groans grew more labored, less reserved, less self doubting. She could have all of him, she wanted all of him, even his wants. "Please." He remembered that sound, it was a wistful plead. He'd gotton lost in thought, in rythm he had let his want, just for a second, topple over and mix with hers.

She had been soft then, in kaer morhen but he hadn't able to move. He didn't want that again, to be too stunned to act. One hand left hers, followed by the other, she wrapped her arms around his neck as he thrusted on. Her hair, behind her head, over ears, arms, abomenn and anything else he could embrace with hands and mouth. She was always leaning towards his touch, she couldn't get enough, and that encouraged him more, he had to hear more and she gave it to him, lovingly, trusting he'd keep her safe.

Fingers stalled out at her lips. "Don't. . ." He let his body tense up, she felt it in the rise of his shoulders.

"What Geralt? I won't do anything you don't want." She tried to still again, tried to be quiet. She remembered that first time too, he didn't want her to remember him telling her to quiet with untrusting sushes.

"Call me by my name. Don't call me witcher." That had been just as cruel, he hated that everytime, he didn't want it again.

"I won't, I promise I won't again Geralt . . .I'm sorry." Still needy but more genuinely apologetic, he didn't want her sorries, he needed more words more praises, more of her want.

"Tell me Anima. Tell me what is it you want?" He asked outright for what he desired without even recognizing. He slowed, he eased. The first time he had coaxed desiring, lustful words from her, she felt it afterwards, enjoying it in the moment but she had felt dirty, felt shame afterwards. He didn't want that, to not be comforting and assuring enough, to push too far and have to mend her after. "Please." It was genuine and while remaining strong it had a softness to it. "If anyone saw us." He was teetering and he knew it, felt her tense in both anticipation and fear she'd go thoughtless. "They'd see what you do to me. They'd see how I want you." He heard it that time but he pressed past it. "They'd stay away. See how perfectly you fit me. They'd know only I'd keep you safe, keep you pleased, keep you loving me." He was panting, desperate for it, she hadn't spoken in so long. Her mewls and moans while pleasant, while spurring, would never compare. "Perfect. Don't you want them to hear how perfect you are Anima?" It was too over the top, too pandering, too outside words he'd speak under any other circumstance. He didn't care, he wanted too badly to care.

"Geralt this is too-"

"Say it again." A long exhale. "Say it again." A groan of needs. "My name." It was turning him weak again, but in the same breath it was grounding him, balancing him.

"Geralt." She was in control, she relaxed slightly and then rocked up boldly, rising too him. She had control but she wasn't abusing it, she was using it to give him exactly what he wanted. "I want . . ." Still fighting herself, holding herself back.

"Tell me Anima, please." Another groan as he felt his hair get knotted in her fist. "You don't have to feel guilty, it's ok to want. I'm here." Nails grebed at the back of his ribs, holding as if to confirm his words. "I won't judge you, wont hurt you. only give." He ground against her, his whole body his whole strength, giving all but the climax he was sure he he could reach but held back as he repeated the action. hearing her pinch back words, just groaning and gasping again. "It's not a trap. I want to give-"

And he chuckled right into her colar bone, he chuckled. "Are you laughing at me?" He felt her well of trust begin to dry at an alarming rate. Peeling his head up he could see absolute dread in her blown out eyes.

"No. Anima I'm not laughing at you. I've learned."

"Learned?" She was still cautious, still pulling from him. Only in that moment did he realize that this wasn't the same tricking test as it had been in the woods, she felt all this genuinely.

"Learned to be better." Each time he had made mistakes, but he had learned from them, been better after knowing the side effects. It wasn't just in baths and bedrolls. Strong things like anchoring her from what her powers could do to her in Rivendell, how quick she was to change and adapt in Lyria and how much he'd do to keep her as she was, how much she'd fight with and against him, always for him and that was healthy. It was learning softness with her too making her smile for him in Lyria, sitting under the stars opening up in Kaeden. Learning to shave because she really did hate beards. And she was learning, being better for him. She had learned how to ease his mind in Lyria, more of what made him in Kaer Morhen, how to help with wounds near Aard How to say his name just right, not to call him witcher because he really did hate when she said it.

"Better." She sighed beneath him in a cool breeze of understanding.

"You still hiding Anima? Still won't tell me what you want?"

"Right now? Or just in general out of lif-" She stopped at the grumble of impatience, he couldn't hold forever.

"Now. Can't think far past that."

"Don't start lying on me now Geralt." It had been all over his face, in every confident or unsure move. "All you do is think."

"Hmm." He had let too much time pass, she was so close and then with the dancing again. "Anima. Just fucking tell me already." His forehead connected, a slight clunk to it, with hers. Sweet nothings were depleted. He was nothing left but want.

"Come undone with me Geralt. I . . . if they hear who cares." Who **they** were was unimportant. And she was nearly there, this was the time to push, strong but soft. "Just please Geralt, I can't take anymore. I'm burning alive just so close Geralt. Too good. Geralt I love you. I can't-" Words, all the words that she could think to say came flooding out. For an empath to stifle back so many emotions must have been unbearable, but so had the pleasure leaning in on pain of holding his whole body back.

"Anima." He pulled her up, in, crushing and soothing in the same kiss. He leaned over to an ear. "Just for me Anima. Just let me hear you again."

"Mmm." She was so curved, so close. ' _Say something, say something.'_ She knew she could tip him with his name but she wanted to be better. "Stay with my Geralt. Please Geralt I don't want to lose you. Geralt I love you, all of you, please believe me." It was a moan it was a cry, she wasn't hiding even though her face slamed hard against the firmness of his chest, nestling in close to his heart. And they were riding it, all the way to the top, lingering in it all the way down. "Just let me hold you a little while longer."

"I'm here." He finally found the words, just the right words for her. Just like his name was to him, those little words told her, promised that he loved her. He held her back, stroking small circles, just as a simple excuse to keep holding her as she continued to float down.

"So?" She was still catching her breath as she crumpled into the bed.

"Why is it always the sos with you?"

"Hmm." He couldn't tell if she was mocking him or just trying to collect what she was trying to say.

"So what?" He raked through her hair with lazy fingers after he too succumbed to a satisfied lay.

"Have you put any thought into what you want?"

"Put thought to. . ." He lifted his head up to check her face to see if he misheard. Her eyebrows rose to signify

_'Well?'_

"Was a bit distracted." He let his head flop back down.

"Hmm." She took his catch all a second time. He was begining to understand how hard that could be to read."Something small then. Start out small, it doesn't have to be some grand request." She rolled over laying into his chest again.

"I want . . ." It lingered. _'Something small.'_ Why was something small so hard to think of? "Go hunting with me? Not monsters just . . . sit and wait for deer?" That was simple right? It was something he already did alone, maybe it would be nice to have some company, maybe he'd even invite Jaskier along. He felt a smile, just a small smile for a small request.

"Hunting?" She seemed to ponder the question. Was this not what she had in mind either?

"If you don't want to you don't-"

"I'll never **want** to." She smirked. "It's perfect Geralt."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more chapter after this one I promise.


	10. hunt for want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A practical want leads to something impractical.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a sappy end but I'm ok with that.

"You really enjoy this?" Jaskier was twitching to speak and finally broke.

"Quiet Jaskier."

"I just don't understand the appeal. We woke up before the sun-"

"Sun was coming up. you're being dramatic." It did say something that in the process of waking Jaskier and Anima their first reaction to early morning was that they were under attack. "And loud."

"To walk to the middle of nowhere to sit in silence for hours?"

"Not exactly silent is it?"

"I . . . just explain what you like about it."

"Hmm. The longer you talk the longer we'll be here."

"Ugh!"

And they sat, and they sat. This time only fifteen minutes or so passed. "I think Anima's cheating. Think she's asleep."

"Cheating?" Geralt only then heard it, the tapping of the back of Anima's head into a tree, she was bored too, just in a more quiet way.

"Not sleeping, just quiet." She smiled warmly as Geralt turned behind to see her. Crossed legs and crossed arms, tapping her head but smiling, the smile grew when she pointed to her mouth then over to him. He was smiling, he hadn't noticed. He turned his head, lowering his face before one of them teased him for it.

"Come on, we'll find somewhere else. Jaskier you can get all your talking out on the walk before you speak another area scarce." Geralt stood with a satisfied groan after another few minutes passed.

"I . . ." Before Geralt could take back the offer, Jaskier bit back the request.

"And Anima we'll find a tree closer to the clearing for you to knock yourself conscious." Geralt helped her to her feet and they began to walk deeper in the forest.

"It normally doesn't take you this long to hunt." Jaskier noted that maybe an hour or so but he was never gone for what Jaskier assumed had been five hours at least.

"Normally it's quiet." Geralt shrugged. "And normally I have to worry what manner of trouble you two will get in while I'm gone."

"So . . ." Cogs were turning in Jaskier's head. "You could have hunted faster. It's normally not this hit or miss is it?"

"Do you starve Jaskier?" Geralt didn't like the implication that he was any less efficent now than he was on any other day. "Normally I wouldn't have sat there that long. Would've moved on earlier." Perhaps slightly less efficent, more . . . content.

"But we didn't."

"Observent as always bard."

"On purpose?"

"Hmm." Geralt shrugged again.

" Let him enjoy himself Jaskier." She could tell Geralt was thinking, that perhaps he had dragged them along and he shouldn't have. _'Don't fall back now. I'm so proud of you Geralt.'_ She held his smile in her mind.

"You've never answered what you like about all this." Jaskier motioned to the still forest. "It can't just be sitting in the quiet. You already do that for hours. I've seen you meditate after you think we're asleep."

 _'Jaskier stop pushing him.'_ Anima was dreading that the smile of just enjoying himself, enjoying having them along would shatter under the bard's scrutiny and be lost forever. "You don't need a reason to enjoy something." She went from behind to next to Geralt, lacing her fingers in his, giving an assuring squeeze. "Dancing doesn't make sense to Geralt but he just accepts that it makes me happy. He sits and watches and just lets me be happy. He doesn't get your passion for wearing impractical clothes throughout the wilds but he accommodates it, makes sure we avoid muck and mud if we can. Waits for you to ogle at every tailor shop we pass. What Geralt enjoys is a bit more quiet, bit more practical." She tried to explain in words Jaskier would understand, tried to convince him to allow Geralt that same patience.

"I guess but-"

"It's . . . nice-" The word almost seemed foriegn to Geralt as he let it pass his lips. "To use my senses not for someone else . . . just for me." Geralt knew what Anima was trying to do, he appreciated the effort and he was trying to snuff out the butt from the bard.

"Oh." And Jaskier understood, finally pulling back, Geralt was happiest when he wasn't **'just'** a witcher, and he didn't get that often enough when others were around. "Sorry."

"You've got an . . . inquisitive mind Jaskier. I didn't expect anything less than-"

"No that we took the one thing that was just for you and took it for granite, made it for us too. Anima after Geralt shows us, maybe we could hunt on our own. Not deer, too heavy, we can't carry that, maybe rabbits or fishing, we could do that surely."

"I can add spices to a rabbit stew, maybe you won't complain as much." While she nodded and agreed, it could be just for Geralt, she hoped that even if the game went to him, he'd let them along again.

"No." Geralt stated with authority, giving Anima's hand a tight squeeze as he came to a halt, a bit of anger and a bit of concern in his eyes. "That doesn't bother me. I . . . it used to be wasteful. Contrary to what you might think of my metabolism Jaskier I can't eat a whole deer in one day. If I was close enough to town I could sell the meat to a merchant that was willing to deal with me. If I wasn't, I couldn't stay and eat it over time. Normally I had to move on, leave the remains to the scavengers." Practical to a fault. "I don't mind" It was close enough to saying 'I like' As either of his companions knew he was capable of. "Having you two share it with me. That you appreciate the work that I did." He was more starved for acknowledgement, just any praise, for more than dispatching a monster, being a witcher, than he'd ever admit to. It was nice to have people who were thankful day in and day out. Even if they didn't say it, he knew it was there, they staid around not for the wolf, not even for the deer, but for the man he was. It was nearly as enjoyable as the hunt itself.

"We do." Anima affirmed the way his mind was reasoning.

"I can be more quiet." Jaskier added.

"Hmm." It was a skeptical acknowledgement of the thought.

" I can try." Jaskier amended.

"Thank you." And Geralt's face went low again, he was smiling again and didn't want any god to see it and try to take it from him.

"Here is fine." Geralt shrugges off his pack and dropped it to the ground with a thud. Jaskier's attempted silence paid off. It only took about half an hour for a deer to come into their line of sight. "Do you want to try?" Geralt knew his swords were to heavy, too long, just out right not for them, he didn't want them to be. He offered Anima one of the more puncture inclined daggers.

"Umm . . ." She knew nothing of hunting, it would not end well, of that she was sure.

"You won't catch it." Geralt agreed. "And Jaskier will try next and he won't catch anything either." He added with a shrug.

"Sounds pretty pointless to me." Jaskier noted.

"I'll catch something don't worry you won't starve. There will always be something out there."

"But why would you want to waste time having us fail miserably? Geralt are you feeling alright?" Jaskier looked for any bump on Geralt's head.

"Because you won't get any better if you don't try." This put a deafening halt to Anima's instinctual tapping of her head into tree. "Now are you going? Or do you plan to let it see us and flee."

Anima took the dagger with the full bared smile that Geralt couldn't muster himself. It was pitiful, watching Anima try to creep softly only to get nowhere near striking distance. He chuckled, let his head dip and smile again, just a little less down this time. As they watched Jaskier try Anima whispered softly to Geralt. "Did you mean it?"

"Hmm?" And another deer fled from them.

"That you'd let us come along again? Maybe not all the time . . . sometimes you wan't to be alone I get that but-"

"I never said that I'd bring you along." Maybe out right smiles were too much, but a smirk he could show.

"You did. We'll never get better and you know that. We **will** starve." She chuckled staring as Jaskier began stomping back to them.

"You'll get better . . ." He paused. "I'll show you." He couldn't try and deny that he did mean to bring them along again.

They had to wait a while longer till anything else would dare pass by and as Geralt considered going back to the clearing they had been to before, he heard something. "Sit closer. The wolves are out."

"Oh after our amazing display with the deer you don't think we could handle a few wolves?" Jaskier took mock offense.

"Sure add huntsman to your title bard." And there was a long contemplative pause that kept Jaskier and Anima from moving. Maybe the wolves were closer than they thought or maybe Geralt had picked up a deer somewhere they couldn't see. "If you don't fear the wolves sit closer because . . ." It hurt, like it was going against everything he'd ever learned, every mutagen carefuly impalnted in him. "Because I want you too." It was a heavy weight off his chest but worry and self loathing swept in where self preservation had left. He'd worked so hard to balance soft and strong, he worried the scales would skew again. They had entertained his practical want, but this wasn't practical, not what they expected of him. He was practical, he expected nothing, not even from them, because that's what witchers did. His head hung lower and as he heard soft footsteps. He looked up to see if he had missed the deer, that would make them think even less of him, anger was beging to lurch it's way in there and he did his best to subdue it. It wasn't their fault he was slowly bending and dulling his edge. It wasn't a deer though either he finally noticed. It was Jaskier and it was Anima quiet as they could muster sitting close to him.

"This I will always want." It didn't matter that he was armored head to toe, she kissed at his shoulder all the same.

"I won't always be like this. Not often."

"No. No one is all one way all the time." Her hand ran up and down his tense neck.

"Witchers are." The worry hadn't left him, it never would.

"You are not other witchers. Have you not listened to a single one of my songs?" Jaskier scoffed.

"I should be. It's better if I am." Geralts teeth ground in torn frustration.

"No Geralt. We wouldn't travel with just any witcher. We travel with you. We like you just the way you are." Anima leaned her head on his shoulder. No other witcher would let them this close, care for them like he did, want to spend time with them, because they didn't have the strength nor the softness he did.

"Hmm." It wasn't a smirk, it was not a smile it was something that was just Geralt. "I always knew there was something off about you two." He let himself kiss at the top of Anima's head.

"Hey!" Another quiet phrase of mock offense came from Jaskier.

"I'm off too, not other witchers." He gave Jaskier a light punch to his arm, to quiet him, to appease him.

"Three odd people in an odd world. Maybe we're just ahead of the curve." Anima tried to lean into Geralt's always calculating mind.

"Hmm." And this moment was nice, and no darkness, no gods monster or man was taking it from him. Still he couldn't say it but he allowed himself to think it. ' _Wouldn't want it any other way.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have started a new part to this series. It might be pretty different than this part, less fluff/smut more angst but this was fun, even though I'm not great at it.


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